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Out in the Forty-Five

by Emily Sarah Holt · English · Gutenberg #23766 · 550,223 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Out in the Forty-Five

Author: Emily Sarah Holt


        
Release date: December 7, 2007 [eBook #23766]

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/23766

Credits: Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK OUT IN THE FORTY-FIVE ***




Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England




Out in the Forty-Five, or Duncan Keith's Vow, by Emily Sarah Holt.

________________________________________________________________________
This book is written in the style of a diary written by the youngest of
four sisters.  She is a very sensitive young girl, and her observations
are very acute.  Most of them are of a religious nature, and the
description of the work of a preacher called Whitefield is very well
worth reading.  I felt quite emotional while reading it.

As you may gather from the title the book is set in the time of 1745, at
the time the Bonny Prince Charlie landed in an attempt to claim his
title to the throne, currently held by the Elector of Hanover, who was
not very popular among the people we meet in this book, most of whom
would be called Jacobites.  It is interesting to see that Jacobite
families like this one were more or less left alone, except when they
actually took up arms.

The book takes about 10 hours to read aloud.  Some of the speech is in
broad lowland Scots, but you will probably have little difficulty in
understanding it.

You will probably come away from reading this book resolved upon an
amendment of life.  If so then the book has done its work.  This is the
first book by this author that we have come across (lent to us for the
occasion) and I am sure we shall add a few more by her in due course.

________________________________________________________________________
OUT IN THE FORTY-FIVE, OR DUNCAN KEITH'S VOW, BY EMILY SARAH HOLT.



CHAPTER ONE.

WE ALIGHT AT BROCKLEBANK FELLS.

  "Sure, there is room within our hearts good store;
  For we can lodge transgressions by the score:
  Thousands of toys dwell there, yet out of door
  We leave Thee."

  GEORGE HERBERT.

"Girls!" said my Aunt Kezia, looking round at us, "I should just like to
know what is to come of the whole four of you!"

My Aunt Kezia has an awful way of looking round at us.  She begins with
Sophy--she is our eldest--then she goes to Fanny, then to Hatty, and
ends up with me.  As I am the youngest, I have to be ended up with.  She
generally lays down her work to do it, too; and sometimes she settles
her spectacles first, and that makes it feel more awful than ever.
However, when she has gone round, she always takes them off--spectacles,
I mean--and wipes them, and gives little solemn shakes of her head while
she is doing it, as if she thought we were all four going to ruin
together, and had got very near the bottom.

This afternoon, when she said that, instead of sitting quiet, as we
generally do, Hatty--she is the pert one amongst us--actually spoke up.

"I should think we shall be married, Aunt Kezia, one of these days--
shan't we?"

"My dear, if you are," was my Aunt Kezia's reply, more solemn than ever,
"the only wedding present that I shall be conscientiously able to give
to those four misguided men will be a rope a-piece to hang themselves
with."

"Oh dear!  I do wish she would not!" said Fanny in a plaintive whisper
behind me.

"Considering who brought us up, Aunt Kezia," replied impertinent Hatty,
"I should have thought they would have had better bargains than that."

"Hester, you forget yourself," said my aunt severely.  Then, though she
had only just finished wiping her spectacles, she took them off, and
wiped them again, with more little shakes of her head.  "And I did not
bring you all up, neither."

My cheeks grew hot, for I knew that meant me.  My Aunt Kezia did not
bring me up, as she did the rest.  I was thought sickly in my youth, and
as Brocklebank Fells is but a bleak place, I was packed off to Carlisle,
where Grandmamma lived, and there I have been with her until six weeks
back, when she went to live with Uncle Charles down in the South, and I
came home to Brocklebank, being thought to have now outgrown my
sickliness.  My Aunt Kezia is Father's sister, and has kept house for
him since Mamma died, so of course she is no kin to Grandmamma at all.
I know it sounds queer to say "Father and Mamma," instead of "Father and
Mother," but I cannot help it.  Grandmamma would never let me say
"Mother;" she said it was old-fashioned and vulgar: and now, when I come
back, Father will not hear of my calling him "Papa," which he says is
new-fangled finnicking nonsense.  I did not get used, either, to saying
"Papa," as I did "Mamma," for Grandmamma never seemed to care to hear
about him; I don't believe she liked him.  She never seemed to want to
hear about anything at Brocklebank.  I don't think she ever took even to
the girls, except Fanny.  They all came to see me in turns, but
Grandmamma said Sophy was only fit to be a country parson's wife; she
knew nothing except things about the house and sewing and mending: she
said fine breeding would be thrown away upon her.  She might do very
well, Grandmamma said, with her snuff-box elegantly held in her left
hand, and taking a pinch out of it with the mittened fingers of her
right--that is, Grandmamma, not Sophy--she said Sophy might do very well
for a country squire's eldest daughter and some parson's wife, to cut
out clothes and roll pills and make dumplings, but that was all she was
good for.  Then Hatty's pert speeches she could not bear one bit.
Grandmamma said it was perfectly dreadful, and that her great glazed red
cheeks--that is what she called them--were insufferably vulgar; she
wouldn't like anybody to hear that such a creature was her
grand-daughter.  She wanted Hatty to take a lot of castor oil or some
such horrid stuff, to bring down her red cheeks and make her slender and
ladylike; she was ever so much too fat, Grandmamma said, and she thought
it so vulgar to be fat.  She wanted to pinch her in with stays, too, but
it was all of no use.  Hatty would not be pinched, and she would not
take castor oil, and she would eat and drink--like a plough-boy,
Grandmamma said--so at last she gave her up as a bad job.  Then Fanny
came, and she is more like Grandmamma in her ways, and she did not mind
the castor oil, but swallowed bottles of it; and she did not mind the
stays, but let Grandmamma pinch her anyhow she pleased, so I think she
rather liked Fanny.  I was pale and thin enough without castor oil, so
she did not give me any, for which I am thankful, for I could not have
swallowed it as meekly as Fanny.

It looked very queer to me, after Grandmamma's houseful of servants, to
come home and find only four at Brocklebank, and but three of those in
the house, and my Aunt Kezia doing half the work herself, and expecting
us girls to help her.  Grandmamma would hardly let me pick up my
kerchief, if I dropped it; I had to call Willet, her woman, to give it
to me.  And here, my Aunt Kezia looks as if she thought I ought to want
no telling how to dust a table or make an apple pie.  She has only
cook-maid and chambermaid,--Maria and Bessy, their names are,--and Sam
the serving-man.  There is the old shepherd, Will, but he only comes
into the house by nows and thens.  Grandmamma had a black man who waited
on us.  She said it gave the place an air, and that there were
gentlewomen in Carlisle who would scarce have come to see her if she had
not had a black man to look genteel.  I don't fancy I should care much
for people who would not come to see me unless I had a black servant.  I
should think they came to visit him, not me.  But Grandmamma said that
my old Lady Mary Garsington, in the Close, never came to see anybody who
had less than a thousand a year, and did not keep a black.  She was the
grandest person Grandmamma knew at Carlisle, for most of her friends
live in the South.

I do not know exactly where the South is, nor what it is like.  Of
course London is in the South; I know that.  But Grandmamma used to talk
about the South as if she thought it so fine; and my Uncle Charles once
said nobody could be a gentleman who had not lived in the South.  They
were all clodhoppers up here, he said, and you could only get any proper
polish in the South.  Fanny was there then, and she was quite hurt with
it.  She did not like to think Father a clodhopper; and I am sure he is
not.  Besides, our ancestors did come from the South.  Our grandfather,
William Courtenay, who bought the land and built Brocklebank, belonged
[Note 1.]  Wiltshire, and his father was a Devonshire man, and a
Courtenay of Powderham, whatever that may mean: Father knows more about
it than I do, and so, I think, does Fanny.  Grandmamma once told me she
would never have thought of allowing Mamma to marry Father, if he had
not been a Courtenay and a man of substance.  She said all his other
relations were so very mean and low, she could not have condescended so
far as to connect herself with them.  Why, I believe one of them was
only a farmer's daughter: and I think, from what I have heard Grandmamma
and my Uncle Charles say, that another of them had something to do with
those low people called Dissenters.  I don't suppose she really was
one--that would be too shocking; but Grandmamma always went into the
clouds when she mentioned these vulgar ancestors of mine, so I never
heard more than "that poor wretched mother of your grandfather's, my
dear," or "that dreadful farming creature whom your grandfather
married."  I once asked my Aunt Dorothea--that is, Uncle Charles's
wife--if this wretched great-grandmother of mine had been a very bad
woman.  But she said, "Oh no, not _bad_"--and I think she might have
told me something more, but my Uncle Charles put in, in that commanding
way he has, "Could not have been worse, my dear Dorothea--connected with
those Dissenters,"--so I got to know no more, and I was sorry.

Father once had two more sisters, who were both married, one in
Derbyshire, and one in Scotland.  They both left children, so we have
two lots of cousins on Father's side.  Our cousins in Derbyshire are
both girls; their names are Charlotte and Amelia Bracewell: and there
are two of our Scotch cousins, but they are a boy and a girl, and they
have queer Scotch names, Angus and Flora Drummond.  At least, they were
boy and girl, I suppose; for Angus Drummond must be over twenty now, and
Flora is not far off it.  It is more than ten years since we saw the
Drummonds, but the Bracewells have been to visit us several times.
Amelia Bracewell is Fanny made hotter, or Fanny is Amelia and water--
which you like.  She makes me laugh, and my Aunt Kezia sniff.  The other
day, my Aunt Kezia came into the room while we were talking about
Amelia, and she heard Fanny say,--

"She is so full of sympathy.  She always comes and wants you to
sympathise with her.  She just lives upon sympathy."

"So full of sympathy!" said my Aunt Kezia, turning round on Fanny.  "So
empty, child, you mean.  What poor weak thing are you talking about?"

"Cousin Amelia Bracewell," answered Fanny.  "She is such a charming
creature.  Don't you think so, Aunt Kezia?  Such a dear sympathetic
darling!"

"It is well you told me whom you meant, Fanny," said my Aunt Kezia,
pursing up her lips.  "I should never have guessed you meant Amelia
Bracewell, from what you said.  Well, how differently two people can see
the same thing, to be sure!"

"Don't you like her, Aunt Kezia?" returned Fanny in an astonished tone.

"If I am to speak the full truth, my dear," said my Aunt Kezia, "I am
afraid I come as near to despising her as a Christian woman and a
communicant has any business to do.  I never had any fancy for birds of
prey."

"Birds of prey!" exclaimed Fanny, blankly.

"Birds of prey," repeated my aunt in a very different tone.  "She is one
of those folks who are for ever drawing twopenny cheques upon your
feelings, and there are no funds in my bank to meet them.  I can stand a
bucketful of feeling drawn out of me, but I hate to let it waste away in
a drop here and a driblet there about nothing at all.  Now I will just
tell you, girls--I once went to see a woman who had lost fifteen hundred
a year, all at a blow, without a bit of warning.  What she had to say
was--`The Lord has taken it, and He knows best.  I can trust Him to care
for me.'  Well, about a week afterwards, I had a visit from another
woman, who had let a pan boil over, and had spoilt a lot of jam.  She
wanted me to say she was the most tried creature since Adam.  And I
could not, girls--I really could not.  I have not the slightest doubt
there have been a million women worse tried since the battle of Prague,
never mention Adam.  As to Amelia Bracewell, who carries her fan as if
it were a sceptre, and slurs her r's like a Londoner, silly chit!  I
have hardly any patience with her.  Charlotte's bad enough, but Amelia!
My word, she takes some standing, I can tell you!"

Now, I always admired the way Amelia sounds her r's, or, I suppose I
ought to say, the way she does not sound them.  It is so soft and
pretty.  Then she writes poetry,--all about the blue sea and the silver
moon, or else the gleaming sunbeams and the hoary hills--so grand!  I
never read anything so beautiful as Amelia's poetry.  She told me once
that a gentleman from London, who was fourth cousin to a peer of some
sort, had told her she wrote as well as Mr Pope.  Only think!

Charlotte is as different as she can be.  Her notion of things is to go
down to the stable and saddle her own horse, and scamper all over the
country, all by herself.  Father says she is a fine girl, but she will
break her neck some day.  My Aunt Kezia says, Saint Paul told women to
be keepers at home, and she thinks that page must have dropped out of
Charlotte's Bible.  She does some other things, too, that I do not fancy
she would care for my Aunt Kezia to hear.  She calls her father "the old
gentleman," and sometimes "the old boy."  I do not know what my Aunt
Kezia would say, if she did hear it.

I wonder what Flora Drummond is like now.  I used to think she had not
much in her.  Perhaps it was only that she did not let it come out.
However, I shall have a chance of finding out soon; for she and Angus
are coming to stay with us, on his way to York, where his father is
sending him on some kind of business.  I do not know what it is, and I
don't care.  Business is always dry, uninteresting stuff.  Flora will
stay with us while Angus goes on to York, and then he will pick her up
again as he comes back.  I wish the Bracewells might be here at the same
time.  I should like Flora and Amelia to know one another, and I do not
think they do at all.

It is shocking dull here at Brocklebank.  I dare say I feel it more than
my sisters, having lived in Carlisle all my life, so to speak: and as to
my Aunt Kezia, I do believe, if she had her garden, and orchard, and
kitchen, and dairy, and her work-box, and a Bible, and Prayer-book, and
The Compleat Gentlewoman, she would be satisfied to live at the North
Pole or anywhere.  But I am perfectly delighted when anybody comes to
see us, if 'tis only Ephraim Hebblethwaite.  He is the son of Farmer
Hebblethwaite, lower down the valley, and I believe he admires Fanny.
Fanny cannot bear him; she says he has such an ugly name.  But I think
he is very pleasant, and I suppose he could change his name, though I
can't see why it signifies.  Beside him, and Ambrose Catterall, and
Esther Langridge, we know no young people except our cousins.  Father
being Squire of Brocklebank, we cannot mix with the common folks.

Old Mr Digby is the Vicar, and I do not think he is far short of a
hundred years old.  He is an old bachelor, and has nobody to keep his
house but our Sam's mother, a Scotchwoman--old Elspie they call her.  He
does not often preach of late years--except on Good Friday and Easter
Sunday, and such high days.  A pleasant old man he used to be, but he
grows forgetful now, for the last time we met him, he patted my head
just as if I were still a little child, and I shall be seventeen in
March.  He has been Vicar over sixty years, and christened Father and
married my grand-parents.

I do wish we had just a few more friends.  It really is too bad, for we
might have known the family at Seven Stones, only two miles off, if they
had not been Whigs, and there are five sons and four daughters there.
Father would no more think of shaking hands with a Whig (if he knew it)
than he would eat roast beef on Good Friday.  I should not care.  Why
should one not have some fun, because old Mr Outhwaite is a Whig?

I shall have to keep my book locked up if I tell it all I think, as I
have been doing now.  I would not have Hatty get hold of it for all the
world.  And as to my Aunt Kezia--I believe she would whip me and send me
to bed if she read only the last page.

Here comes Ambrose Catterall up the walk, and I must go down, though I
do not expect there will be any fun.  He will stay supper, I dare say,
and then he and Father will have a game of whist with Sophy and Fanny,
and I shall sit by with my sewing, and Hatty will knit and whisper into
my ear things that I want to laugh at and dare not.  If I did, Father
would look up over his cards with a black brow and say "Silence!" in
such a tone that I shall wish I was somebody else.  Who I don't know--
only not Caroline Courtenay.

Father does not like our names--at least mine and Sophy's.  Mamma named
us, and he says we have both fine romantic silly names.  Hatty was
called after his mother, and that he likes; and Fanny is after a sister
of Mamma's who died young.  But Father never gives over growling because
one of us was not a boy.

"Four girls!" he says: "four girls, and never a lad!  Who on earth wants
four girls?  I'll sell one or two of you cheap, if I can find him."

But I don't think he would, if it came to the point.  I know, for all
his queer speeches sometimes, he is proud of Fanny's good looks, and
Sophy's good housekeeping, and even Hatty's pert sayings.  I know by the
way he chuckles now and then when she says anything particularly smart.
I don't know what he is proud of in me, unless it is my manners.  Of
course, having lived in Carlisle with Grandmamma, I have the best
manners of any.  And I speak the best, I know.  Sophy talks shockingly
broad; she says, "Aw wanted him to coom, boot he would not."  Fanny has
found that will not do, so she tries to imitate my Aunt Dorothea and
Amelia Bracewell, but she goes on the other side of her pattern, and
does not sound the u full where she ought to do it, but says, "The basin
is fell of shegar."  Hatty laughs at them both, and lets her u go where
it likes, but she is not so bad as Sophy.

I think I shall try and put the notion into my Aunt Kezia's head to have
the Bracewells here for Christmas.  I know Angus and Flora will be here
then, and later.  That would make a decent party, if we got Ephraim
Hebblethwaite, and Ambrose Catterall too.

After all, I went on writing so late, that I only got down-stairs in
time to see Ambrose Catterall's back as he went down the drive.  He
could not stay for some reason--I did not hear what.  Father growled as
he heard him go off, singing, down the walk.

"Where on earth did the fellow get hold of that piece of whiggery?" said
he.  "Just listen to him!"

I listened, and heard the refrain of the Whigs' favourite song,--

  "Send him victorious,
  Happy and glorious,
  Long to reign over us--"

"Disgusting stuff!" said Father, with some stronger words which I know
my Aunt Kezia would not let me put down if she were looking.  "Where did
the fellow get hold of it?  His father is a decent Tory enough.  What is
he at now?  Listen, girls."

Ambrose's tune had changed to,--

  "King George he was born in the month of October,--
  'Tis a sin for a subject that month to be sober!"

"I'll forbid him my house!" cries Father, starting up.  "I'll send a
bullet through his head!  I'll October him, and sober him too, if he has
not a care!  Fan!  Where's Fan?  Go to the spinnet, girl, and sing me a
right good Tory song, to take the taste of that abominable stuff out of
my mouth."

"Nay, Brother," saith my Aunt Kezia, who was pinning a piece of work on
the table, "surely a man may use respect to the powers that be, though
they be not the powers he might wish to be?"

"`Powers that be!'" saith Father.  "Powers that shouldn't be, you mean.
I'll tell you what, Kezia,--you may have been bred a Tory, but you were
born a Puritan.  Whereon earth you got it--!  As for that fellow, I'll
forbid him my house.  `King George,' forsooth!  Let me hear one of you
call the Elector of Hanover by that name, and I'll--I'll--.  Come along,
Fan, and give me a Tory song."

So Fanny sat down to the spinnet, and played the new song that all the
Tories are so fond of.  How often she made Britain arise from out the
azure waves, I am sure I don't know, but she, and Father with her, sang
it so many times that all that day I had "Britons never shall be
slaves!" ringing in my ears till I heartily wished they would be slaves
and have done with it.

At night, when we were going to bed, after Father had blessed us, Hatty
runs round to his back and whispers in his ear.

"Don't send Ambrose Catterall away, there's a good Father!" says she:
"there will be two of us old maids as it is."

Father laughed, and pinched Hatty's ear.  So I saw my gentlewoman had
been thinking the same thing I had.  But I don't think she ought to have
said it out.

Stay, now!  Why should it be worse to say things than to think them?  Is
it as bad to think them as to say them?  Oh dear! but if one were for
ever sifting one's thoughts in that way,--why, it would be just
dreadful!  Not many people are careful about their words, but one's
thoughts!

No, I don't think I could do it, really.  I suppose my Aunt Kezia would
say I ought.  I do so dislike my Aunt Kezia's oughts.  She always thinks
you ought to do just what you do not want.  If only people would say,
now and then, that you ought to eat plum-pudding, or you ought to dance,
or you ought to wear jewels!  But no! it is always you ought to sew, or
you ought to carry some broken victuals to old Goody Branscombe, or you
ought to be as sweet as a rosebud when Hatty says things at you.

Stop! would it be so if I always wanted to do the things I ought?  I
suppose not.  Then why don't I?

But why ought I?  There's another question.

I wish we either wanted to do what we ought, or else that we ought to do
what we want!

I was obliged to stop last night all at once, because I heard Hatty
coming up the garret stairs.  I always write in the garret and keep my
book there, so that none of the girls shall get hold of it--Hatty
particularly.  She would make such shocking game of it.  I had only just
put my book away safely when in she came.

"What on earth are you doing up here?" cried she.

"What are you doing?" said I.

"Looking for you," she says.

"Then why should not I be looking for you?" said I.

"Because you weren't, Miss Caroline Courtenay!" and she makes a swimming
courtesy.  "Oh yes, you don't need to tell me you have a secret, my
young gentlewoman.  I know as well as if I had seen it.  O Pussy, have
you come too?  Do you know what it is, Pussy?  Does she come up here to
read her love-letters--does she?  Oh, how charming!  Wouldn't I like to
see them!  How does she get them, Pussy?  She has been rather fond of
going to see Elspie this past week or two; is that it, Pussy?  Won't you
tell me, my pretty, pretty cat?"

"Hatty, don't be so absurd!" cried I.

"We know, don't we, Pussy?" says Hatty in a provoking whisper to the cat
in her arms.  "I thought there would be somebody at Carlisle that she
would be sorry to leave--didn't you, Pussy-cat?  What is he like, Pussy?
Tall and dark, I'll wager, with a pair of handsome mustachios, and the
most beautiful black eyes you ever saw!  Won't that be about it, Pussy?"

I could have thrown the cat at her.  How could any mortal creature be
sweet, or keep quiet, talked to in that way?  I flew out.

"Hatty, you are the most vexatious tease that ever lived!  Do, for
pity's sake, go down and let me alone.  You know perfectly well it is
all stuff and nonsense!"

"Oh, how angry she is, my pretty pussy!" says Hatty, hiding her laughing
face behind the cat.  "It was all nonsense, you know; but really, when
she gets into such a tantrum, I begin to think I must have hit the
white.  What do you say, Pussy?"

I stamped on the garret floor.

"Hatty, will you take that hideous cat down and be quiet?" cried I.

"Dear, dear!  To think of her calling you a hideous cat!  Doesn't that
show how angry she is?  People should not get angry--should they, Pussy?
She will box our ears next.  I really think we had better go, my
darling tabby."

So off went Hatty with the cat in her arms, but as she was going down
the stairs, she said, I am sure for me to hear,--

"We will come some other time, won't we, Pussy? when the dragon is out
of her den: and we will have a quiet rummage, you and I; and we'll find
her love-letters!"

Now is not that too bad?  What is one to do?  Job could not have kept
his temper if he had lived with Hatty.  I wish she would get married--I
do!  Fanny never interferes with any one--she just goes her way and lets
you go yours.  And when Sophy interferes, it is only because something
is left untidy, or you have not done something you promised to do.  She
does not tease for teasing's sake, like Hatty.

And then, when I came down, after having composed my face, and passed
Hatty on my way into the parlour, what should she say but,--

"Didn't you wish I was in Heaven just now?"

"I should not have cared where you were, if you had kept out of the
garret!" said I.

Hatty gave one of her odious giggles, and away she went.

Now, how can I live at peace with Hatty, will anybody tell me?

------------------------------------------------------------------------

I am so delighted!  My Aunt Kezia has come into my plan for having the
Bracewells here at Christmas, along with the Drummonds.

"It might be as well," said she, "if we could do some good to that poor
frivolous thing Amelia; but don't you get too much taken up with her,
Caroline, my dear.  She is a silly maid at best."

"Oh, Amelia is Fanny's friend, not mine, Aunt Kezia," said I.  "And
Charlotte is Sophy's."

"And is Flora to be yours?" said Aunt Kezia.

"I have not made one yet," I answered.  "I do not know what Flora is
like."

"As well to wait and see, trow," says my Aunt Kezia.

Sam was bringing in breakfast while this was said; and as soon as he had
set down the cold beef he turned to my Aunt Kezia and said,--

"Then she's just a braw lassie, Miss Flora, nae mair and nae less; and
she'll bring ye a' mickle gude, and nae harm."

"Why, how do you know, Sam?" asked my Aunt Kezia.

"Hoots! my mither's sister's daughter was her nurse," said he.  "Helen
Raeburn they ca' her, and her man's ane o' the Macdonalds.  Trust me,
but I ha'e heard monie a tale o' thae Drummonds,--their faither and
mither and their gudesire and minnie an' a'."

"What is Angus like, Sam?" said I.

"Atweel, he's a bonnie laddie; but no just--"

Sam stopped short and pulled a face.

"Not just what?" says my Aunt Kezia.

"Ye'll be best to find oot for yersel, Mrs Kezia, I'm thinkin'."

And off trudged Sam after jelly, and we got no more out of him.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

I wonder where the living creature is that could stand Hatty!  There was
I at work this morning in the parlour, when in she came--there were
Sophy and Fanny too--holding up something above her head.

"`Busk ye, busk ye, my bonnie, bonnie bride!'" sang Hatty.  "Look what
I've found, just now, in the garret!  Oh yes, Miss Caroline, you can
look too."

"Hatty, if you don't give me that book this minute--!" cried I.  "I did
think I had hidden it out of search of your prying fingers."

"Dear, yes, and of my bright eyes, I feel no doubt," laughed Hatty.
"You are not quite so clever as you fancy, Miss Caroline.  Carlisle is a
charming city, but it does not hold all the brains in the world."

"What is it, Hatty?" said Sophy.  "Don't tease the child."

"Wait a little, Miss Sophia, if you please.  This is a most interesting
and savoury volume, wherein Miss Caroline Courtenay sets down her
convictions on all manner of subjects in general, and her unfortunate
sisters in particular.  I find--"

"Hatty, do be reasonable, and give the child her book," said Fanny.  "It
is a shame!"

"Oh, you keep one too, do you, Miss Frances?" laughed Hatty.  "I had my
suspicions, I will own."

"What do you mean?" said Fanny, flushing.

"Only that the rims of your pearly ears would not be quite so ruddy, my
charmer, if you were not in like case.  Well, I find from this book that
we are none of us perfect, but so far as I can gather, Fanny comes
nearest the angelic world of any of us.  As to--"

"Hatty, you ought to be ashamed of yourself if you have been so
dishonourable as to read what was not meant for any one to see."

"My beloved Sophy, don't halloo till you are out of the wood.  And you
are not out, by any means.  You are vulgar and ill-bred, my dear; you
say `coom' and `boot,' and you are only fit to marry a country curate,
and cut out shirts and roll pills."

"I say what?" asked Sophy, disregarding the other particulars.

"You say `coom' and `boot,' my darling, and it ought to be `kem' and
`bet'," said Hatty, with such an affected pronunciation that Sophy and
Fanny both burst out laughing.

"What do you mean?" said Sophy amid her laughter.

"Then--Fanny, my dear, you are not to escape!  You are better bred than
Sophy, because you take castor oil--"

"Hatty, what nonsense you are talking!"  I cried, unable to endure any
longer.  But Hatty went on, taking no notice.

"But you drop your r's, deah, and say deah Caroline,--(can't manage it
right, my dear!)--and you are slow and affected."

"Hatty, you know I never said so!"  I screamed.

"Then as to me," pursued Hatty, casting her eyes up to the ceiling, "as
to poor me, I am--well, not one of the angels, on any consideration.  I
tease my sweetest sister in the most cruel manner--"

"Well, that is true, Hatty, if nothing else is," said Fanny.

"I have `horrid glazed red cheeks,' and I eat like a plough-boy; and I
don't take castor oil.  Castor oil is evidently one of the Christian
graces."

"How can you be so ridiculous!" said Sophy.  "See, you have made the
poor child cry."

"With passion, my dear, which is a very wicked thing, as I am sure my
Aunt Kezia would tell her.  A little castor oil would--"

"What is that about your Aunt Kezia?" came in another voice from the
doorway.

Oh, I was so glad to see her!

"Hoity-toity! why, what is all this, girls?" said she, severely.
"Hester, what are you doing?  What is Cary crying for?"

"Hatty is teasing her, Aunt," said Fanny.  "She is always doing it, I
think."

"Give me that book, Hester," said my Aunt Kezia; and Hatty passed it to
her without a word.  "Now, whom does this book belong?"

"It is mine, Aunt Kezia," I said, as well as my sobs would let me; "and
Hatty has found it, and she is teasing me dreadfully about it."

"What is it, my dear?" said my Aunt Kezia.

"It is my diary, Aunt Kezia; and I did not want Hatty to get hold of
it."

"She says such things, Aunt Kezia, you can't imagine, about you and all
of us."

"I am sure I never said anything about you, Aunt Kezia," I sobbed.

"If you did, my dear, I dare say it was nothing worse than all of you
have thought in turn," saith my Aunt Kezia, drily.  "Hester, you will go
to bed as soon as the dark comes.  Take your book, Cary; and remember,
my dear, whenever you write in it again, that God is looking at every
word you write."

Hatty made a horrid face at me behind my Aunt Kezia's back; but I don't
believe she really cared anything about it.  She went to bed, of course;
and it is dark now by half-past five.  But she was not a bit daunted,
for I heard her singing as she lay in bed, "Fair Rosalind, in woful
wise," [Note 2.] and afterwards, "I ha'e nae kith, I ha'e nae kin."
[Note 3.]  If Father had heard that last, my Aunt Kezia would have had
to forgive her and let her off the rest of her sentence.

I have found a new hiding-place for my book, where I do not think Hatty
will find it in a hurry.  But when I sit down to write now, my Aunt
Kezia's words come back to me with an awful sound.  "God is looking at
every word you write!"  I suppose it is so: but somehow I never rightly
took it in before.  I hardly think I should have written some words if I
had.  Was that what my Aunt Kezia meant?

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Note 1.  This and similar expressions are Northern provincialisms.

Note 2.

  "Fair Rosalind, in woful wise,
  Six hearts has bound in thrall;
  As yet she undetermined lies
  Which she her spouse shall call."

Note 3.  Perhaps the most plaintive and poetical of all the popular
Jacobite ballads.



CHAPTER TWO.

TAWNY EYES.

  "She has two eyes so soft and brown,
  Take care!
  She gives a side-glance and looks down,--
  Beware!  Beware!
  Trust her not,
  She is fooling thee!"

  LONGFELLOW.

Here they all are at last, and the house is as full as it will hold.
The Bracewells came first in their great family coach and four--
Charlotte and Amelia and a young friend whom they had with them.  Her
name is Cecilia Osborne, and she is such a genteel-looking girl!  She
moves about, not languidly like Amelia, but in such a graceful, airy way
as I never saw.  She has dark hair, nearly black, and brown eyes with a
sort of tawny light in them,--large eyes which gleam out on you just
when you are not expecting it, for she generally looks down.  Amelia
appears more listless and affected than ever by the side of her, and
Charlotte's hoydenish romping seems worse and more vulgar.

The Drummonds did not come for nearly a week afterwards.  I was rather
afraid what Cecilia would think of them for I expected they would talk
Scotch--I know Angus used to do--and Cecilia is from the South, and I
thought she would be quite shocked.  But I find they talk just as we do,
only with a little Scots accent, as if they were walking over sandhills
in their throats--as least that is how it sounds to me.  Flora has
rather more of it than Angus, but then her voice is so clear and soft
that it sounds almost pretty.  A young gentleman came with them, named
Duncan Keith, who was going with Angus about that business he has to do.
They only stayed one night, didn't [Note 4.]  Mr Keith and Angus, and
then went on about their business; but Father was so pleased with Mr
Keith, that he invited him to come back when Angus does, which will be
in about three weeks or a month.  So here we are, eight girls instead of
four, with never a young man among us.  Father says, when Angus and Mr
Keith come back, we will have Ephraim Hebblethwaite and Ambrose
Catterall to spend the evening, and perhaps Esther Langridge too.  I
don't feel quite sure that I should like Esther to come.  She is not
only as bad as Sophy with her "buts" and her "comes" but she does not
behave quite genteelly in some other ways: and I don't want Cecilia
Osborne to fancy that we are a set of vulgar creatures who do not know
how to behave.  I don't care half so much what Flora thinks.

Cecilia has not been here a fortnight, and yet I keep catching myself
wondering what she will think about everything.  It is not that I have
made a friend of her: in fact, I am not sure that I quite like her.  She
seems to throw a sort of spell over me, does Cecilia, as if I were
afraid of her and must obey her.  I don't half like it.

My Aunt Kezia has put us into rooms in pairs, while they are here.  In
Sophy's chamber, where I generally sleep, are Sophy and Charlotte.  In
Fanny's, which she and Hatty have when we are by ourselves, are Fanny
and Amelia.  In the green spare chamber are Hatty and Cecilia; and in
the blue one, Flora and me.  My Aunt Kezia said she thought we should
find that the pleasantest arrangement; but I do wish she had given Flora
to Hatty, and put Cecilia with me.  I am sure I should have understood
Cecilia much better than Hatty, who will persist in calling her Cicely,
which she says she does not like because it is such a vulgar name--and
so common, too.  Cecilia says she wishes she had not been called by a
name which had a vulgar short one to it: she would like to have been
either Camilla or Henrietta.  She thinks my name sweetly pretty; but she
wonders why we call Hester, Hatty, which she says is quite low and ugly,
and hardly, is the proper short for Hester.  She says Hatty and Gatty
are properly short for Harriet, and Hester should be Essie, which is
much prettier.  But then we call Esther Langridge, Essie, and we could
not do with two Essies.  I know Father used to call Mamma, Gatty, but
Grandmamma said she always thought it so vulgar.

Grandmamma was always talking about things being vulgar, and so is
Cecilia.  I notice that some people--for instance, my Aunt Kezia and
Flora--never seem to think whether things are vulgar or not.  Cecilia
says that is because they are so vulgar they don't know it.  I wonder if
it be.  But Cecilia says--she said I was not to repeat it, though--that
my Aunt Kezia and Sophy are below vulgarity.  When we were dressing one
morning, I asked Flora what she thought.  She is as genteel in her
manners as Cecilia herself, only in quite a different way.  Cecilia
behaves as if she wanted you to notice how genteel she is.  Flora is
just herself: it seems to come natural to her, as if she never thought
about it.  So I asked Flora what she thought "vulgarity" meant, and if
people could be below vulgarity.

"I should not think they could get below it," said she.  "It is easy to
get above it, if you only go the right way.  How can you get below a
thing which is down at the bottom?"

"But how would you do, Flora, not to be vulgar?"

"Learn good manners and then never think about them."

"But you must keep, up your company manners," said I.

"Why have any?" said she.

"What, always have one's company manners on!" cried I, "and be
courtesying and bowing to one's sisters as if they were people one had
never seen before?"

"Nay, those are ceremonies, not manners," said Flora.  "By manners, I do
not understand ceremonies, but just the way you behave to anybody at any
time.  It is not a ceremony to set a chair for a lame man, nor to shut a
door lest the draught blow on a sick woman.  It is not a ceremony to eat
with a knife and fork, or to see that somebody else is comfortable
before you make yourself so."

"Why, but that is just kindness!" cried I.

"What are manners but kindness?" said Flora.  "Let a maiden only try to
be as kind as she can to every creature of God, and she will not find
much said in reproof of her manners."

"Are you always trying to be kind to everybody, Flora?"

"I hope so, Cary," she said, gravely.

"Flora, have you any friend?" said I.  "I mean a particular friend--a
girl friend like yourself."

"Yes," she said.  "My chief friend is Annas Keith."

"Mr Duncan Keith's sister?"

"Yes," said Flora.

"Do tell me what she is like," said I.

"I am not sure that I could," said Flora.  "And if I did, it would only
be like looking at a map.  Suppose somebody showed you a map of the
British Isles, and put his finger on a little pink spot, and told you
that was Selkirk.  How much wiser would you be?  You could not see the
Yarrow and Ettrick, and breathe the caller air and gather the purple
heather.  And I don't think describing people is much better than to
show places on a map.  Such different things strike different people."

"How?" said I.  "I don't see how they could, in the same face."

"As we were coming from Carlisle with Uncle Courtenay," said Flora,
smiling, "I asked him to tell me what you were like, Cary."

"Well, what did Father say?"  I said, and I felt very much amused.

"He said, `Oh, a girl with a pale face and a lot of light thatch on it,
with fine ways that she picked up in Carlisle.'  But when I came to see
you, I thought that if I had had to describe you, those were just the
things I should not have mentioned."

"Come, then, describe me, Flora," said I, laughing.  "What do you see?"

"I see two large, earnest-looking blue eyes," she said, "under a broad
white forehead; eyes that look right at you; clear, honest eyes,--not--
at least, the sort of eyes I like to look at me.  Then I see a small
nose--"

"Let my nose alone, please," said I: "I know it turns up, and I don't
want to hear you say so."

Flora laughed.  "Very well; I will leave your nose alone.  Underneath
it, I see two small red lips, and a little forward chin; a rather
self-willed little chin, if you please, Cary--and a good figure, which
has learned to hold itself up and to walk gracefully.  Will that do for
a description?"

"Yes," I said, looking in the glass; "I suppose that is me."

"Is it, Cary?  That may be all I see; but is it you?  Why, it is only
the morocco case that holds you.  You are the jewel inside, and what
that is, really and fully, I cannot see.  God can see it; and you can
see some of it.  But I can see only what you choose to show me, or, now
and then, what you cannot help showing me."

"Do you know that you are a very queer girl, Flora?  Girls don't talk in
that way.  Cecilia Osborne told me yesterday she thought you a very
curious girl indeed."

"I think my match might be found," said Flora, rather drily.  "For one
thing, Cary, you must remember I have had nothing to do with other girls
except Annas Keith.  Father and Angus have been my only companions; and
a girl who has neither mother nor sisters perhaps gets out of girls'
ways in some respects."

"But you are not the only `womankind,' as Father calls it, in the
house?" said I.

"Oh, no, there is Helen Raeburn," answered Flora: "but she is an old
woman, and she is not in my station.  She would not teach me girls'
ways."

"Then who taught you manners, Flora?"

"Oh, Father saw to all that Helen could not," she said.  "Helen could
teach me common decencies, of course; such as not to eat with my
fingers, and to shake hands, and so forth: but the little niceties of
ladylike behaviour that were beyond her--Father saw to those."

"Well, I think you have very pleasant manners, Flora.  I only wish you
were not quite so grave."

"Thank you for the compliment, Miss Caroline Courtenay," said Flora,
dropping me a courtesy.  "I would rather be too grave than too giddy."

That very afternoon, Cecilia Osborne asked me to walk up the Scar with
her.  Somehow, when she asks you to do a thing, you feel as if you must
do it.  I do not like that sort of enchanted feeling at all.  However, I
fetched my hood and scarf, and away we went.  We climbed up the Scar
without much talk--in fact, it is rather too steep for that: but when we
got to the top, Cecilia proposed to sit down on the bank.  It was a
beautiful day, and quite warm for the time of the year.  So down we sat,
and Cecilia pulled her sacque carefully on one side, that it should not
get spoiled--she was very charmingly dressed in a sacque of purple
lutestring, with such a pretty bonnet, of red velvet with a gold pompoon
in front--and then she began to talk, as if she had come for that, and I
believe she had.  It was not long before I felt pretty sure that she had
brought me there to pump me.

"How long have you known Miss Drummond?" she began.

"Well, all my life, in a fashion," I said; "but it is nearly ten years
since we met."

"Ten years is a good deal of your life, is it not?" said Cecilia,
darting at me one of those side-glances from her tawny eyes.

I tried to do it last night, and made my eyes feel so queer that I was
not sure they would get right by morning.

"Well, I suppose it is," said I; "I am not quite seventeen yet."

"You dear little thing!" said Cecilia, imprisoning my hand.  "What is
Miss Drummond's father?"

"A minister," said I.

"A Scotch Presbyterian, I suppose?" she said, turning up her nose.  I
did not think she looked any prettier for it.

"Well," said I, "I suppose he is."

"And Mr Angus--what do they mean to make of him, do you know?"

"Flora hopes he will be a minister too.  His father wishes it; but she
is not sure that Angus likes the notion himself."

"Dear me!  I should think not," said Cecilia, "He is fit for something
far better."

"What can be better?"  I answered.

"You have such charming ideas!" replied Cecilia.  She put in another
word, which I never heard before, and I don't know what it means.  She
brought it with her from the South, I suppose.  Unso--unsophy--no,
unsophisticated--I think that was it.  It sounded uncommon long and
fine, I know.

"I suppose Scotch ministers have not much money?" continued Cecilia.

"I don't know--I think not," I answered.  "But I rather fancy my Uncle
Drummond has a little of his own."

Cecilia darted another look at me, and then dropped her eyes as if she
were studying the grass.

"And Mr Keith?" she said presently, "is he a relation?"

"I don't know much about him," said I, "only what I have heard Flora
say.  He is no relation of theirs, I believe.  I think he is the
squire's son."

"The squire's son!" cried Cecilia, in a more interested tone.  "And who
is the squire?--is he rich?--where is the place?"

"As to who he is," said I, "he is Mr Keith, I suppose.  I don't know a
bit whether he is rich or poor.  I forget the name of the place--I think
it is Abbotsmuir, or something like that.  Either an abbot or a monk has
something to do with it."

"And you don't know if Mr Keith is a rich man?" said Cecilia, I thought
in rather a disappointed tone.

"No, I don't," said I.  "I can ask Flora, if you want to know."

"Not for the world!" cried Cecilia, laying her hand again on mine.
"Don't on any account let Miss Drummond know that I asked you such a
question.  If you like to ask from yourself, you know--well, that is
another matter; but not from me, on any consideration."

"I don't understand you, Miss Osborne," said I.

"No, you dear little thing, I believe you don't understand me," said
Cecilia, kissing me.  "What pretty hair you have, and how nice you keep
it, to be sure!--so smooth and glossy!  Come, had we not better be going
down, do you think?"

So down we came, and found dinner ready; and I do not think I ever
thought of it again till I was going to bed.  Then I said to Flora,--"Do
you like Cecilia Osborne?"

"I--think we had better not talk about people, Cary, if you please."

But there was such a pause where I have drawn that long stroke, that I
am sure that was not what she intended to say at first.

"Then you don't," said I, making a hit at the truth, and, I think,
hitting it in the bull's eye.  "Well, no more do I."

Flora looked at me, but did not speak.  Oh, how different her look is
from Cecilia's sudden flashes!

"She has been trying to pump me, I am sure, about you and Angus, and Mr
Keith," said I; "and I think it is quite as well I knew so little."

"What about?" said Flora.

"Oh, about money, mostly," said I.  "Whether Uncle had much money, and
if Mr Keith was a rich man, and all on like that.  I can't bear girls
who are always thinking about money."

Flora drew a long breath.  "That is it, is it?" she said, in a low
voice, as she tied her nightcap, but it was rather as if she were
speaking to herself than to me.  "Cary, perhaps I had better answer you.
I am afraid Miss Osborne is a very dangerous girl; and she would be
more so than she is if she were a shade more clever, so as to hide her
cards a little better.  Don't tell her anything you can help."

"But what shall I say if she asks me again? because she wanted me not to
tell you that she had asked, but to get to know as if I wanted it
myself."

"Tell her to ask me," said Flora, with more spirit than I had expected
from her.

When Cecilia began again (as she did) asking me the same sort of things,
I said to her, "Why don't you ask Cousin Flora instead of me?  She knows
so much more about it than I do."

Cecilia put her hands on my shoulders and kissed me.

"Because I like to ask you," said she, "and I should not like to ask
her."

My Aunt Kezia was just coming into the room.

"Miss Cecilia, my dear," said she, "do you always think what you like?"

"Of course, Mrs Kezia," said Cecilia, smiling at her.

"Then you will be a very useless woman," said my aunt, "and not a very
happy one neither."

"Happy--ah!" said Cecilia, with a long sigh.  "This world is not the
place to find happiness."

"No, it isn't," said my Aunt Kezia, "for people who spend all their time
hunting for it.  It is a deal better to let happiness hunt for you.  You
don't go the right way to get it, child."

"I do not, indeed!" answered Cecilia, with a very sorrowful look.  "Ah,
Mrs Kezia, `the heart knoweth his own bitterness.'  That is Scripture,
I believe."

"Yes, it does," said my aunt, "and it makes a deal of it, too."

"Oh dear, Mrs Kezia!" cried Cecilia.  "How could anybody make
unhappiness?"

"If you don't, you are the first girl I have met of your sort," saith my
Aunt Kezia, turning down the hem of a kerchief.  Then, when she came to
the end of the hem, she looked up at Cecilia.  "My dear, there is a
lesson we all have to learn, and the sooner you learn it, the better and
happier woman you will be.  The end of selfishness is not pleasure, but
pain.  You don't think so, do you?  Ah, but you will find as you go
through life, that always you are not only better, but happier, with
God's blessing on the thing you don't like, than without it on the thing
you do.  Ay, it always turns to ashes in your mouth when you will have
the quails instead of the manna.  I've noted many a time--for when I was
a girl, and later than that, I was as self-willed as any of you--that
sometimes when I have set my heart upon a thing, and would have it,
then, if I may speak it with reverence, God has given way to me.  Like a
father with an obstinate child, He has said to me, as it were, `Poor
foolish child!  You will have this glittering piece of mischief.  Well,
have your way: and when you have cut yourself badly with it, and are
bleeding and smarting as I did not wish to see you, come back to your
Father and tell Him all about it, and be healed and comforted.'  Ah dear
me, the dullest of us is quite as clever as she need be in making rods
for her own back.  And then, if our Father keep us from hurting
ourselves, and won't let us have the bright knife to cut our fingers
with, how we do mewl and whine, to be sure!  We are just a set of silly
babes, my dear--the best of us."

"My Aunt Dorothea once told me," said I, "that the Papists have what
they call `exercises of detachment.'  Perhaps you would think them good
things, Aunt Kezia.  For instance, if an abbess sees a nun who seems to
have a fancy for any little thing particularly, she will take it from
her and give it to somebody else."

"Eh, poor foolish things!" said Aunt Kezia.  "Bits of children playing
with the Father's tools!  They are more like to hurt themselves a deal
than to get His work done.  Ay, God has His exercises of detachment, and
they are far harder than man's.  He knows how to do it.  He can lay a
finger right on the core of your heart, the very spot where it hurts
worst.  Men can seldom do that.  They would sometimes if they could, I
believe; but they cannot, except God guides them to it.  Many's the time
I've been asked, with a deal of hesitation and apology, to do a thing
that did not cost me a farthing's worth of grief or labour; and as
lightly as could be, to do another which would have gone far to break
either my back or my heart.  Different folks see things in such
different ways.  I'll be bound, now, if each of us were asked to pick
out for one another the thing in this house that each cared most about,
we should well-nigh all of us guess wrong.  We know so little of each
other's inmost hearts.  That little kingdom, your own heart, is a thing
that you must keep to yourself; you can't let another into it.  You can
bring him to the gate, and let him peep in, and show him a few of your
treasures; but you cannot give him the freedom of the city.  Depend upon
it, you would think very differently of me from what you do, and I
should think differently of each of you, if we could see each other's
inmost hearts."

"Better or worse, Mrs Kezia?" said Cecilia.

"May be the one, and may be the other, my dear.  It would hang a little
on the heart you looked at, and a great deal on the one who looked at
it.  I dare say we should all get one lesson we need badly--we might
learn to bear with each other.  'Tis so easy to think, `Oh, she cannot
understand me! she never had this pain or that sorrow.'  Whereas, if you
could see her as she really is, you would find she knew more about it
than you did, and understood some other things beside, which were dark
riddles to you.  That is often a mountain to one which is only a
molehill to another.  And trouble is as it is taken.  If there were no
more troubles in this world than what we give each other in pure
kindness or in simple ignorance, girls, there would be plenty left."

"Then you think there were troubles in Eden?" said Cecilia,
mischievously.

"I was not there," said my Aunt Kezia.  "After the old serpent came
there were troubles enough, I'll warrant you.  If Adam came off
scot-free for saying, `The woman whom Thou gavest to be with me,' Eve
must have been vastly unlike her daughters."

I was quite unable to keep from laughing, but Cecilia did not seem to
see anything to laugh at.  She never does, when people say funny things;
and she never says funny things herself.  I cannot understand her.  She
only laughs when she does something; and, nine times out of ten, it is
something in which I cannot see anything to laugh at--something which--
well, if it were not Cecilia, I should say was rather silly and babyish.
I never did see any fun in playing foolish tricks on people, and
worrying them in all sorts of ways.  Hatty just enjoys it; but I don't.

However, before anything else was said, Father came in, and a young
gentleman with him, whom he introduced as Mr Anthony Parmenter, the
Vicar's nephew (He turned out to be the Vicar's grand-nephew, which, I
suppose, is the same thing.)  I am sure he must have come from the
South.  He did not shake hands, nor profess to do it.  He just touched
the hand you gave him with the tips of his fingers, and then with his
lips, as if you were a china tea-dish that he was terribly frightened of
breaking.  Cecilia seemed quite used to this sort of thing, but I did
not know what he was going to do; and, as for my Aunt Kezia, she just
seized his hand, and gave it a good old-fashioned shake, at which he
looked very much put out.  Then she asked him how the Vicar was, and he
did not seem to know; and how long he was going to stay, and he did not
know that; and when he came, to which he said Thursday, in a very
hesitating way, as if he were not at all sure that it was not Wednesday
or Friday.  One thing he knew--that it was hawidly cold--there, that is
just how he said it.  I suppose he meant horribly.  My Aunt Kezia gave
him up after a while, and went on sewing in silence.  Then Cecilia took
him up, and they seemed to understand each other exactly.  They talked
about all sorts of things and people that I never heard of before; and I
sat and listened, and so did my Aunt Kezia, only that she put in a word
now and then, and I did not.

Before they had been long at it, Fanny and Amelia came in from a walk,
in their bonnets and scarves, and Mr Parmenter bowed over their hands
in the same curious way that he did before.  Amelia took it as she does
everything--that is, in a languid, limp sort of way, as if she did not
care about anything; but Fanny looked as if she did not know what he was
going to do to her, and I saw she was puzzled whether she ought to shake
hands or not.  Then Fanny went away to take her things off, but Amelia
sat down, and pulled off her scarf, and laid it beside her on the sofa,
not neatly folded, but all huddled up in a heap, and there it might have
stayed till next week if my Aunt Kezia (who hates Amelia's untidy ways)
had not said to her,--

"My dear, had you not better take your things up-stairs?"

Amelia rose with the air of a martyr, threw the scarf on her arm, and
carrying her bonnet by one string, went slowly up-stairs.  When they
came down together, my Aunt Kezia said to Fanny,--

"My dear, you had better take a shorter walk another time."

"We have not had a long one, Aunt," said Fanny, looking surprised.  "We
only went up by the Scar, and back by Ellen Water."

"I thought you had been much farther than that," says my Aunt Kezia, in
her dry way.  "Poor Emily [Note 1.] seemed so tired she could not get
up-stairs."

Fanny stared, and Amelia gave a faint laugh.  My Aunt Kezia said no
more, but went on running tucks: and Amelia joined in the conversation
between Cecilia and Mr Parmenter.  I hardly listened, for I was trying
the new knitting stitch which Flora taught me, and it is rather a
difficult one, so that it took all my mind: but all at once I heard
Amelia say,--

"The beauty of self-sacrifice!"

My Aunt Kezia lapped up the petticoat in which she was running the
tucks, laid it on her knee, folded her hands on it, and looked full at
Amelia.

"Will you please, Miss Emily Bracewell, to tell me what you mean?"

"Mean, Aunt?"

"Yes, my dear, mean."

"How can the spirit of that sweet poetical creature," murmured Fanny,
behind me, "be made plain to such a mere thing of fact as my Aunt
Kezia?"

"Well," said Amelia, in a rather puzzled tone, "I mean--I mean--the
beauty of self-sacrifice.  I do not see how else to put it."

"And what makes it beautiful, think you?" said my Aunt Kezia.

"It is beautiful in itself," said Amelia.  "It is the fairest thing in
the moral world.  We see it in all the analogies of creation."

"My dear Emily," said my Aunt Kezia, "you may have learned Latin and
Greek, but I have not.  I will trouble you to speak plain, if you
please.  I am a plain English woman, who knows more about making shirts
and salting butter than about moral worlds and the analogies of
creation.  Please to explain yourself--if you understand what you are
talking about.  If you don't, of course I wouldn't wish it."

"Well, a comparison, then," answered Amelia, in a slightly peevish tone.

"That will do," said my Aunt Kezia.  "I know what a comparison is.
Well, let us hear it."

"Do we not see," continued Amelia, with kindling eyes, "the beauty of
self-sacrifice in all things?  In the patriot daring death for his
country, in the mother careless of herself, that she may save her child,
in the physician braving all risks at the bedside of his patient?  Nay,
even in the lower world, when we mark how the insect dies in laying her
eggs, and see the fresh flowers of the spring arise from the ashes of
the withered blossoms of autumn, can we doubt the loveliness of
self-sacrifice?"

"How beautiful!" murmured Fanny.  "Do listen, Cary."

"I am listening," I said.

"Charming, Madam!" said Mr Parmenter, stroking his mustachio.
"Undoubtedly, all these are lessons to those who have eyes to see."

I did not quite like the glance which was shot at him just then out of
Cecilia's eyes, nor the look in his which replied.  It appeared to me as
if those two were only making game of Amelia, and that they understood
each other.  But almost before I had well seen it, Cecilia's eyes were
dropped, and she looked as demure as possible.

"Some folk's eyes don't see things that are there," saith my Aunt Kezia,
"and some folk's eyes are apt to see things that aren't.  My Bible tells
me that God hath made everything beautiful in its season.  Not out of
its season, you see.  Your beautiful self-sacrifice is a means to an
end, not the end itself.  And if you make the means into the end, you
waste your strength and turn your action into nonsense.  Take the
comparisons Amelia has given us.  Your patriot risks death in order to
obtain some good for his country; the mother, that she may save the
child; the physician, that he may cure his patient.  What would be the
good of all these sacrifices if nothing were to be got by them?  My
dears, do let me beg of you not to be caught by claptrap.  There's a
deal of it in the world just now.  And silly stuff it is, I assure you.
Self-sacrifice is as beautiful as you please when it is a man's duty,
and as a means of good; but self-sacrifice for its own sake, and without
an object, is not beautiful, but just ridiculous nonsense."

"Then would you say, Aunt Kezia," asked Amelia, "that all those grand
acts of mortification of the early Christians, or of the old monks, were
worthless and ridiculous?  They were not designed to attain any object,
but just for discipline and obedience."

"As for the early Christians, poor souls! they had mortifications enough
from the heathen around them, without giving themselves trouble to make
troubles," said my Aunt Kezia.  "And the old monks, poor misguided dirty
things!  I hope you don't admire them.  But what do you mean by saying
they were not means to an end, but only discipline?  If that were so,
discipline was the end of them.  But, my dear, discipline is a
sharp-edged tool which men do well to let alone, except for children.
We are prone to make sad blunders when we discipline ourselves.  That
tool is safer in God's hands than in ours."

"But there is so much poetry in mortification!" sighed Amelia.

"I am glad if you can see it," said my Aunt Kezia.  "I can't.  Poetry in
cabbage-stalks, eaten with all the mud on, and ditch water scooped up in
a dirty pannikin!  There would be a deal more poetry in needles and
thread, and soap and water.  Making verses is all very well in its
place; but you try to make a pudding of poetry, and you'll come badly
off for dinner."

"Dinner!" said Amelia, contemptuously.

"Yes, my dear, dinner.  You dine once a day, I believe."

"Dear, I never care what I eat," cried Amelia.  "The care of the body is
entirely beneath those who have learned to prize the superlative value
of the mind."

My Aunt Kezia laughed.  "My dear," said she, "if you were a little older
I might reason with you.  But you are just at that age when girls take
up with every silly notion they come across, and carry it ever so much
farther, and just make regular geese of themselves.  'Tis a comfort to
hope you will grow out of it.  Ten years hence, if we are both alive, I
shall find you making pies and cutting out bodices like other sensible
women.  At least I hope so."

"Never!" cried Amelia.  "I never could demean myself to be just an
every-day creature like that!"

"I am sorry for your husband," said my Aunt Kezia, bluntly, "and still
more for yourself.  If you set up to be an uncommon woman, the chances
are that instead of rising above the common, you will just sink below
it, into one of those silly things that spend their time sipping tea and
flirting fans, and making men think all women foolish and unstable.  And
if you do that--well, all I have to say is, may God forgive you!--Cary,
I want some jumballs for tea.  Just go and see to them."

So away I went to the kitchen, and heard no more of the talk.  But what
was I to do?  I knew how to eat jumballs very well indeed, but how to
make them I knew no more than Mr Parmenter's eyeglass.  She forgets,
does my Aunt Kezia, that I have lived all my life in Carlisle, where
Grandmamma would as soon have thought of my building a house as making
jumballs.

"Maria," said I, "my Aunt Kezia has sent me to make jumballs, and I
don't know how, not one bit!"

"Don't you, Miss Cary?" said Maria, laughing: "well, I reckon I do.
Half a pound of butter--will you weigh it yourself, Miss?--and the same
of white sugar, and a pound of flour, and three ounces of almonds, and
three eggs, and a little lemon peel--that's what you'll want."  [Note
2.]

We were going about the buttery, as she spoke, gathering up and weighing
these things, and putting them together on the kitchen table.  Then
Maria tied a big apron on me, which she said was Fanny's, and gave me a
little pan in which she bade me melt the butter.  Then I had to beat the
sugar into it, and then came the hard part--breaking the eggs, for only
the yolks were wanted.  I spoiled two, and then I said,--

"Maria, do break them for me!  I shall never manage this business."

"Oh yes, you will, Miss Cary, in time," says she, cheerily.  "It comes
hard at first, till you're used to it.  Most things does.  See now, you
pound them almonds--I have blanched 'em--and I'll put the eggs in."

So we put in the yolks of eggs, and the almonds, and the flour, and the
lemon peel, till it began to smell uncommon good, and then Maria showed
me how to make coiled-up snakes of it on the baking-tin, as jumballs
always are: and I washed my hands, and took off Fanny's apron, and went
back into the parlour.

I found there all whom I had left, and Hatty and Flora as well.  When
tea came, and my jumballs with it, my Aunt Kezia says very calmly,--

"Pass me those jumballs, my dear, will you?  Amelia won't want any; she
is an uncommon woman, and does not care what she eats.  You may give me
some, because I am no better than other folks."

"O Aunt Kezia, but I like jumballs!" said Amelia.

"You do?" says my Aunt Kezia.  "Well, but, my dear, they don't grow on
trees.  Somebody has to make them, if they are to be eaten; and 'tis
quite as well we are not all uncommon women, or I fear there would be
none to eat.--Cary, you deserve a compliment, if you made these all by
yourself."

I hastened to explain that I deserved none at all, for Maria had helped
me all through; but my Aunt Kezia did not seem at all vexed to hear it;
she only laughed, and said, "Good girl!"

"Isn't it horrid work?" said Cecilia, who sat next me, in a whisper.

"Oh no!" said I; "I rather like it."

She shrugged her shoulders in what Hatty calls a Frenchified way.
"Catch me at it!" she said.

"You can come to the kitchen and catch me at it, if you like," said I,
laughing.  "But it is all as new to me as to you.  Till a few months
ago, I lived with my grandmother in Carlisle, and she never let me do
anything of that sort."

"What was her name?" said Cecilia.

"Desborough," said I; "Mrs General Desborough."

"Oh, is Mrs Desborough your grandmother?" cried she.  "I know Mrs
Charles Desborough so well."

"That is my Aunt Dorothea," said I.  "Grandmamma is gone to live with my
Uncle Charles."

"How pleasant!" said Cecilia.  "You are such a sweet little darling!"
and she squeezed my hand under the table.

I began to wonder if she meant it.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

"O Cary!" cried Cecilia the next morning, "do come here and tell me who
this is."

"Who what is?" said I, for I looked out of the window, and could see
nobody but Ephraim Hebblethwaite.

"Oh, that handsome young man coming up the drive," returned she.

"That?"  I said.  "Is he handsome?  Why, 'tis but Ephraim
Hebblethwaite."

"Whom?" cried Cecilia, with one of her little shrieking laughs.  "You
never mean to say that fine young man has such a horrid name as Ephraim
Hebblethwaite!"

Hatty had come to look over my shoulder.

"Well, I am afraid he has," said I.

"Just that exactly, my dear," returned Hatty, in her teasing way.  "Poor
creature!  He is sweet on Fanny."

"Is he?" asked Cecilia, in an interested tone.  "Surely she will not
marry a man with such a name as that?"

"Well, if you wish to have my private opinion about it," said Hatty, in
her coolest, that is to say, her most provoking manner, "I rather--
think--she--will."

"I wouldn't do such a thing!" disdainfully cried Cecilia.

"Nobody asked you, my dear," was Hatty's answer.  "I hope you would not,
unless you are prepared to provide another admirer for Fanny.  They are
scarce in these parts."

"I cannot think how you can live up here in these uncivilised regions!"
cried Cecilia.  "The country people are all just like bears--"

"Do they hug you so very hard?" said Hatty.

"They are so rough and unpolished," continued Cecilia, "so--so--really,
I could not bear to live in Cumberland or any of these northern
counties.  It is just horrid!"

"Then hadn't you better go back again?" said Hatty, coolly.

"I am sure I shall be thankful when the time comes," answered Cecilia,
rather sharply.  "Except you in this family, I do think--"

"Oh, pray don't except us!" laughed Hatty, turning round the next minute
to speak to Ephraim Hebblethwaite.  "Mr Ephraim Hebblethwaite, this is
Miss Cecilia Osborne, a young lady from the South Pole or somewhere on
the way, who does not admire us Cumbrians in the smallest degree, and
will be absolutely delighted to turn her back upon the last of us."

"You know I never said that!" said Cecilia, rather affectedly, as she
rose and courtesied to Ephraim.

Ephraim is the only person I know who can get along with Hatty.  He
always seems to see through what she says to what she means; and he
never answers any of her pert speeches, nor tries to explain things, nor
smooth her down, as many others do.

"Miss Osborne must stay and learn to like us a little better," said he,
good-humouredly.  "Where is Fanny?"

"Looking in the glass, I imagine," said Hatty, calmly.

"Hatty!" said I.  "She is in the garden with Sophy."

"You are the Nymphs of the Winds," laughed Ephraim, "and Hatty is the
North Wind."

"Are you sure she is not the East?" said I, for I was vexed.  And as I
turned away, I heard Hatty say, laughing,--

"I do enjoy teasing Cary!"

"For shame, Hatty!" answered Ephraim, who speaks to us all as if we were
his sisters.

"I assure you I do," pursued Hatty, in a voice of great glee,
"particularly when my lady puts on her grand Carlisle air, and sweeps
out of the room as she did just now.  It is such fun!"

I had slipped into the next window, where they could not see me, and I
suppose Hatty thought I had gone out of the door beyond.  I had not the
least idea of eavesdropping, and what I might hear when they fancied me
gone never came into my head till I heard it.

"You see," Hatty went on, "there is no fun in teasing Sophy, for she
just laughs with you, and gives you as good as you bring; and Fanny
melts into tears as if she were a lump of sugar, and Father wants to
know why she has been crying, and my Aunt Kezia sends you to bed before
dark--so teasing her comes too expensive.  But Cary is just the one to
tease; she gets into a tantrum, and that is rich!"

Was it really Cecilia's voice which said, "She is rather vain,
certainly, poor thing!"

"She is just as stuck-up as a peacock!" replied Hatty: "and 'tis all
from living with Grandmamma at Carlisle--she fancies herself ever so
much better than we are, just because she learned French and dancing."

"Well, if I had a sister, I would not say things of that sort about
her," said Ephraim, bluntly.  "Hatty, you ought to be ashamed."

"Thank you, Mr Hebblethwaite, I don't feel so at all," answered
laughing Hatty.

"And she really has no true polish--only a little outside varnish," said
Cecilia.  "If she were to be introduced at an assembly in Town, she
would be set down directly as a little country girl who did not know
anything.  It is a pity she cannot see herself better."

"There are some woods that don't take polish nearly so well as others,"
said Ephraim, in a rather curious tone.  I felt hurt; was he turning
against me too?

"So there are," said Cecilia.  "I see, Mr Hebblethwaite, you understand
the matter."

"Pardon me, Miss Osborne," was Ephraim's dry answer.  "I am one of those
that do not polish well.  Compliments are wasted on me--particularly
when the shaft is pointed with poison for my friends.  And as to seeing
one's self better--I wish, Madam, we could all do that."

As Ephraim walked away, which he did at once, I am sure he caught sight
of me.  His eyes gave a little flash, and the blood mounted in his
cheek, but he kept on his way to the other end of the room, where Fanny
and Amelia sat talking together.  I slipped out of the door as soon as I
could.

That wicked, deceitful Cecilia!  How many times had she told me that I
was a sweet little creature--that my life at Carlisle had given me such
a polish that I should not disgrace the Princess's drawing-room!  [Note
3.]  And now--!  I went into my garret, and told my book about it, and
if I must confess the truth, I am afraid I cried a little.  But my eyes
do not show tears, like Fanny's, for ever so long after, and when I had
bathed them and become a little calmer, I went down again into the
parlour.  I found my Aunt Kezia there now, and I was glad, for I knew
that both Cecilia and Hatty would be on their best behaviour in her
presence.  Ephraim was talking with Fanny, as he generally does, and
there was that "hawid" creature Mr Parmenter, with his drawl and his
eyeglass and all the rest of it.

"Indeed, it is very trying!" he was saying, as I came in; but he never
sounds an r, so that he said, "vewy twying."  I don't know whether it is
that he can't, or that he won't.  "Very trying, truly, Madam, to see men
give their lives for a falling cause.  Distressing--quite so."

"I don't know that it hurts me to see a man give his life for a falling
cause," saith my Aunt Kezia.  "Sometimes, that is one of the grandest
things a man can do.  But to see a man give his life up for a false
cause--a young man especially, full of hope and fervency, whose life
might have been made a blessing to his friends and the world--that is
trying, Mr Parmenter, if you like."

"Are we not bound to give our lives for the cause of truth and beauty?"
asked Amelia, in that low voice which sounds like an Aeolian harp.

"Truth--yes," saith my Aunt Kezia.  "I do not know what you mean by
beauty, and I am not sure you do.  But, my dear, we do give our lives,
always, for some cause.  Unfortunately, it is very often a false one."

"What do you mean, Aunt?" said Amelia.

"Why, when you give your life to a cause, is it not the same thing in
the end as giving it for one?" answered my Aunt Kezia.  "I do not see
that it matters, really, whether you give it in twenty minutes or
through twenty years.  The twenty years are the harder thing to do--that
is all."

"Duncan Keith says--" Flora began, and stopped.

"Let us hear it, my dear, if it be anything good," quoth my Aunt Kezia.

"I cannot tell if you will think it good or not, Aunt," said Flora.  "He
says that very few give their lives to or for any cause.  They nearly
always give them for a person."

"Mr Keith must be a hero of chivalry," drawled Mr Parmenter, showing
his white teeth in a lazy laugh.

(Why do people always simper when they have fine teeth?)

"Chivalry ought to be another name for Christian courage and charity,"
saith my Aunt Kezia.  "Ay, child--Mr Keith is right.  It is a pity it
isn't always the right person."

"How are you to know you have found the right person, Aunt?" said Hatty,
in her pert way.

My Aunt Kezia looked round at her in her awful fashion.  Then she said,
gravely, "You will find, Hatty, you have always got the wrong one,
unless you aim at the Highest Person of all."

I heard Cecilia whisper to Mr Parmenter, "Oh, dear! is she going to
preach a sermon?" and he hid a laugh under a yawn.  Somebody else heard
it too.

"Mrs Kezia's sermons are as short as some parsons' texts," said
Ephraim, quietly, and not in a whisper.

"But you would not say," observed Mr Parmenter, without indicating to
whom he addressed himself, "that this cause, now--ha--of which we were
speaking,--that the lives, I mean--ha--were sacrificed to any particular
person?"

"I never saw one plainer, if you mean me," said my Aunt Kezia, bluntly.
"What do nine-tenths of the men care about monarchy or commonwealth--
absolute kings or limited ones--Stuart or Hanoverian?  They just care
for Prince Charles, and his fine person and ringing voice, and his
handsome dress: what else?  And the women are worse than the men.  Some
men will give their lives for a cause, but you don't often see a woman
do it.  Mostly, with women, it is father or brother, lover or husband,
that carries the day: at least, if you have seen women of another sort,
they haven't come my way."

"But, Aunt, that is so ignoble a way of acting!" cried Amelia, as though
she wanted to show that she was one of the other sort.  "Love and
devotion to a holy or chivalrous cause should be free from all petty
personal considerations."

"You can get yours free, my dear, if you like--and find you can manage
it," said my Aunt Kezia.  "I couldn't.  As to ignoble, that hangs much
on the person.  When Queen Margaret of Scotland was drowning in yonder
border river, and the good knight rode into the water and held forth his
hand to her, and said, `Grip fast!' was that a petty, ignoble
consideration?  It was a purely personal matter."

"Oh, of course, if you--" said Amelia, and did not go on.

"Things look very different, sometimes, according to the side on which
you see them," saith my Aunt Kezia.

I could not help thinking that people did so.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Note 1.  Emily was used during the last century as a diminutive for
Amelia.  There is really no etymological connection between the two
names.

Note 2.  In and about London, the name of jumbles is given to a common
kind of gingerbread, to be obtained at the small sweet-shops: but these
are not the old English jumball of the text.

Note 3.  There was no Queen at this time.  Augusta of Saxe Gotha was
Princess of Wales, and the King had three grown-up unmarried daughters.

Note 4.  This provincialism is correct for Lancashire, and as far as I
know for Cumberland.



CHAPTER THREE.

THE HUNT-SUPPER.

  "Alas! what haste they make to be undone!"

  GEORGE HERBERT.

Before he went away, Ephraim came up into the window where I sat with my
knitting.  Mr Parmenter was gone then, and Cecilia was up-stairs with
Fanny and Amelia.

"Cary," said he, "may I ask you a question?"

"Why, Ephraim, I thought you did that every day," I said, feeling rather
diverted at his saying such a thing.

"Ah, common questions that do not signify," said he, with a smile.  "But
this is not an insignificant question, Cary; and it is one that I have
no right to ask unless you choose to give it me."

"Go on, Ephraim," said I, wondering what he meant.

"Are you very fond of Miss Osborne?"

"I never was particularly fond of her," I said, rather hotly, and I felt
my cheeks flush; "and if I had been, I think this morning would have put
an end to it."

"She is not true," he said.  "She rings like false metal.  Those who
trust in her professions will find the earth open and let them in.  And
I should not like you to be one, Cary."

"Thank you, Ephraim," said I.  "I think there is no fear."

"Your Cousin Amelia is foolish," he went on, "but I do not think she is
false.  She will grow out of most of her nonsense.  But Cecilia Osborne
never will.  It is ingrain.  She is an older woman at this moment than
Mrs Kezia."

"Older than my Aunt Kezia!"  I am afraid I stared.

"I do not mean by the parish register, Cary," said Ephraim, with a
smile.  "But she is old in Satan's ways and wiles, in the hard
artificial fashions of the world, in everything which, if I had a
sister, I should pray God she might never know anything about.  Such
women are dangerous.  I speak seriously, Caroline."

I thought it had come to a serious pass, when Ephraim called me
Caroline.

"It is not altogether a bad thing to know people for what they are," he
continued.  "It may hurt you at the time to have the veil taken off; and
that veil, whether by the people themselves or by somebody else, is
often pulled off very roughly.  But it is better than to have it on,
Cary, or to see the ugly thing through beautiful coloured glass, which
makes it look all kinds of lovely hues that it is not.  The plain white
glass is the best.  When you do come to something beautiful, then, you
see how beautiful it is."  Then, changing his tone, he went on,--"Esther
Langridge sent you her love, Cary, and told me to say she was coming up
here this afternoon."

I did not quite wish that Esther would keep away, and yet I came very
near doing it.  She is not a beautiful thing--I mean in her ways and
manners.  She speaks more broadly than Sophy, and much worse than the
rest of us, and she eats her peas with a knife, which Grandmamma used to
say was the sure sign of a vulgar creature.  Esther is as kind-hearted a
girl as breathes; but--oh dear, what will Cecilia say to her!  I felt
quite uncomfortable.

And yet, why should I care what Cecilia says?  She has shown me plainly
enough that she does not care for me.  But somehow, she seemed so above
us with those dainty ways, and that soft southern accent, and all she
knew about etiquette and the mode, and the stories she was constantly
telling about great people.  Sir George Blank had said such a fine thing
to her when she was at my Lady Dash's assembly; and my Lady Camilla
Such-an-one was her dearest friend; and the Honourable Annabella This
carried her to drive, and my Lord Herbert That held her cloak at the
opera.  It was so grand to hear her!

Somehow, Cecilia never said things of that kind when my Aunt Kezia was
in the room, and I noted that her grand stories were always much tamer
in Flora's or Sophy's presence.  She did not seem to care about Hatty
much either way.  But when there were only Amelia, Fanny, Charlotte and
me, then, I could not help seeing, she laid the gilt on much thicker.
Charlotte used to sit and stare, and then laugh in a way that I thought
very rude; but Cecilia did not appear to mind it.  When Father came into
the parlour, she did so change.  Oh, then she was so sweet and
amiable!--so delicately attentive!--so anxious that he should be made
comfortable, and have everything just as he liked it!  I did think,
considering that he had four daughters, she might have left that to us.
To Ephraim Hebblethwaite she was very attentive and charming, too, but
in quite a different way.  But she wasted no attention at all on Mr
Parmenter, except for those side-glances now and then out of the tawny
eyes, which seemed to say that they perfectly understood one another,
and that no explanations of any sort were necessary between them.

I cannot make out what Mr Parmenter does for his living.  He is not a
man of property, for the Vicar told Father that his nephew, Mr
Parmenter's father, left nothing at all for his children.  Yet Mr
Anthony never seems to do anything but look through his eyeglass, and
twirl his mustachios, and talk.  I asked Amelia if she knew, for one of
the Miss Parmenters, who is married now, lives not far from Bracewell
Hall.  Amelia, however, applied to Cecilia, saying she would be more
likely to know.

"Oh, he does nothing," said Cecilia; "he is a beau."

"Now what does that mean?" put in Hatty.

"I'll tell you what it means," said Charlotte.  "Emily, you be quiet.
It means that his income is twenty pence a year, and he spends two
thousand pounds; that he is always dressed to perfection, that he is
ready to make love to anybody at two minutes' notice--that is, if her
fortune is worth it; that he is never at home in an evening, nor out of
bed before noon; that he spends four hours a day in dressing, and would
rather ten times lose his wife (when he has one) than break his clouded
cane, or damage his gold snuff-box.  Isn't that it, Cicely?"

"You are so absurd!" said Amelia, languidly.

"I told you to keep quiet," was Charlotte's answer.  "Never mind whether
it is absurd; is it true?"

"Well, partly."

"But I don't understand," I said.  "How can a man spend two thousand
pounds, if he have but twenty pence?"

"Know, ignorant creature," replied Charlotte, with mock solemnity, "that
lansquenet can be played, and that tradesmen's bills can be put behind
the fire."

"Then you mean, I suppose, that he games, and does not pay his debts?"

"That is about the etiquette, [Note 1.] my charmer."

"Well, I don't know what you call that down in the South," said I, "but
up here in Cumberland we do not call it honesty."

"The South!  Oh, hear the child!" screamed Charlotte.  "She thinks
Derbyshire is in the South!"

"They teach the children so, my dear, in the Carlisle schools,"
suggested Hatty.

"I don't know what they teach in the Carlisle schools," I said, "for I
did not go there.  But if Derbyshire be not south of Cumberland, I
haven't learned much geography."

"Oh dear, how you girls do chatter!" cried Sophy, coming up to us.  "I
wish one or two of you would think a little more about what wants doing.
Cary, you might have made the turnovers for supper.  I am sure I have
enough on my hands."

"But, Sophy, I do not know how," said I.

"Then you ought, by this time," she answered.  "Do not know how to make
an apple turnover!  Why, it is as easy as shutting your eyes."

"When you know how to do it," put in Hatty.

"That is more than you do," returned Sophy, "for you are safe to leave
something out."

Hatty made her a low courtesy, and danced away, humming, "Cease your
funning," just as we heard the sound of horses' feet on the drive
outside.  There were all sorts of guesses as to who was coming, and none
of them the right one, for when the door opened at last, in walked Angus
Drummond and Mr Keith.

"Well, you did not expect us, I suppose?" said Angus.

"Certainly not to-night," was Sophy's answer.

"We finished our business sooner than we expected, and now we are ready
to begin our holiday," said he.

Father came in then, and there was a great deal of kissing and
hand-shaking all round; but my Aunt Kezia and Flora were not in the
room.  They came in together, nearly half an hour later; but I think I
never saw such a change in any girl's face as in Flora's, when she saw
what had happened.  She must be very fond of Angus, I am sure.  Her
cheeks grew quite rosy--she is generally pale--and her eyes were like
stars.  I did not think Angus seemed nearly so glad to see her.

Essie Langridge was very quiet all the evening; I fancy she was rather
frightened of Cecilia.  She said very little.

Father had a long day's hunting yesterday, and Angus Drummond went with
him.  Mr Keith would not go, though Father laughed about it, and asked
if he were afraid of the hares eating him up.  Neither would he go to
the hunt-supper, afterwards.  There were fourteen gentlemen at it, and a
pretty racket they made.  My Aunt Kezia does not like these hunt-suppers
a bit; she would be glad if they were anywhere else than here; but
Father being the squire, of course they cannot be.  She always packs us
girls out of the way, and will not allow us to show our heads.  So we
sat up-stairs, in Sophy's chamber, which is the largest and most out of
the way; and we had some good fun, first in finding seats, for there
were only two chairs in the room, and then in playing hunt the slipper
and all sorts of games.  I am afraid we got rather too noisy at last,
for my Aunt Kezia looked in with,--

"Girls, are you daft?  I protest you make nigh as much racket as the
gentlemen themselves!"

What Mr Keith did with himself I do not know.  I think he went off for
a walk somewhere.  I know he tried to persuade Angus to go with him, but
Angus said he wanted his share of the fun.  I heard Mr Keith say, in a
low voice,--

"What would your father say, Angus?"

"Oh, my father's a minister, and they are bound to be particular," said
Angus, carelessly.  "I can't pretend to make such a fash as he would."

I did not hear what Mr Keith answered, but I believe he went on talking
about it.  When I got up-stairs with the rest, however, I missed Flora;
and going to our room to look for her, I found her crying.  I never saw
Flora weep before.

"Why, Flora!" said I, "what is the matter with you?"

"Nothing with me, Cary," she said, "but a great deal with Angus."

"You do not like his being at the supper?"  I said.  I hardly knew what
to say, and I felt afraid of saying either too much or too little.  It
seems so difficult to talk without hurting people.

"Not only that," she said.  "I do not like the way he is going on
altogether.  I know my father would be in a sad way if he knew it."

I told Flora what I had heard Angus say to Mr Keith.

"Ah!" she said, with another sob, "Angus would not have said that three
months ago.  I was sure it must have been going on for some time.  He
has been in bad company, I feel certain.  And Angus always was one to
take the colour of his company, just as a glass takes the colour of
anything you pour in.  What can I do?  Oh, what can I do?  If he will
not listen to Duncan--"

"Ambrose Catterall says that young men must always sow their wild oats,"
I said, when she stopped thus.

"That is one of the Devil's maxims," exclaimed Flora, earnestly.  "God
calls it sowing to the flesh: and He says the harvest of it is
corruption.  Some flowers seed themselves: thistles do.  Did you ever
know roses grow from thistle seed?  No: `whatsoever a man soweth, that
shall he reap.'  Ah me, for Angus's harvest!"

"Well, I don't see what you can do," said I.

"There is the sting," she replied.  "It would be silly to weep if I did.
No, in such cases, I think there is only one thing a woman can do--and
that is to cry mightily unto God to loose the bonds of the oppressor,
and let the oppressed go free.  I don't know--I may be mistaken--but I
hardly think it is of much use for women to talk to such a man.  It is
not talking that he needs.  He knows his own folly, very often, at least
as well as you can tell him, and would be glad enough to be loosed from
his bonds, if only somebody would come and tear them asunder.  He
cannot: and you cannot.  Only God can.  Some evil spirits can be cast
out by nothing but prayer.  Cary--" Flora broke off suddenly, and looked
up earnestly in my face.  "Don't mention this, will you, dear?  I should
not have said a word to you nor any one if you had not surprised me."

I promised her I would not, unless somebody first spoke to me.  She
would not come to Sophy's room.

"Tell the girls," she said, "that I want to write home; for I shall do
it presently, when I feel a little calmer."

Something struck me as I was turning away.  "Flora," I said, "why do you
not tell my Aunt Kezia all about it?  I am sure she would help you, if
any one could."

"Yes, dear, I think she would," said Flora, gently; "but you see no one
could.  And remember, Cary!" she called me back as I was leaving the
chamber, and came to me, and took both my hands; and her great sorrowful
eyes, which looked just like brown velvet, gazed into mine like the eyes
of a dog which is afraid of a scolding: "remember, Cary, that Angus is
not wicked.  He is only weak.  But how weak he is!"

She broke down with another sob.

"But men should be stronger than women," said I, "not weaker."

"They are, in body and mind," replied Flora: "but sex, I suppose, does
not extend to soul.  There, some men are far weaker than some women.
Look at Peter.  I dare say the maid who kept the door would have been
less frightened of the two, if he had taunted her with being one of
`this man's disciples.'"

"Well, I should feel ashamed!"  I said.

"I am not sure if women do not feel moral weakness a greater shame than
men do," replied Flora.  "Men seem to think so much more of want of
physical bravery.  Many a soldier will not stand an ill-natured laugh,
who would want to fight you in a minute if you hinted that he was afraid
of being hurt.  Things seem to look so different to men from what they
do to women; and, I think, to the angels, and to God."

I did not like to leave her alone in her trouble: but she said she
wanted nothing, and was going to write to her father; so I went back to
Sophy's room, and gave Flora's message to the girls.

"Dear!  I am sure we don't want her," said Hatty: and Charlotte added,
"She is more of a spoil-sport than anything else."

So we played at "Hunt the slipper," and "Questions and commands," and
"The parson has lost his cloak," and "Blind man's buff": and then when
we got tired we sat down--on the beds or anywhere--Hatty took off the
mirror and perched herself on the dressing-table, and Charlotte wanted
to climb up and sit on the mantel-shelf, but Sophy would not let her--
and then we had a round of "How do you like it?" and then we went to
bed.

In the middle of the night I awoke with a start, and heard a great
noise, and Sam's voice, and old Will's, and a lot of queer talking, as
if something were being carried up-stairs that was hard to pull along;
and there were a good many words that I am sure my Aunt Kezia would not
let me write, and--well, if He do look at what I am writing, I should
not like God to see them neither.  I felt sure that the gentlemen were
being carried up to bed--such of them as could not walk--and such as
could were being helped along.  I rather wonder that gentlemen like to
drink so much, and get themselves into such a queer condition.  I do not
think they would like it if the ladies began to do such things.  I could
not help wondering if Angus were among them.  Flora, who had lain awake
for a long while, and had only dropped asleep, as she told me
afterwards, about half an hour before, for she heard the clock strike
one, slept on at first, and I hoped she would not awake.  But as the
last lot were being dragged past our door, Flora woke up with a start,
and cried,--

"What is that?  O Cary, what can be the matter?"

I wanted to make as light of it as I could.

"Oh, go to sleep," I said; "there is nothing wrong."

"But what is that dreadful noise?" she persisted.

"Well, it is only the gentlemen going to bed," said I.

Just then, sounds came through the door, which showed that they were
close outside.  Somebody--so far as I could guess from what we heard--
was determined to sit down on the stairs, and Sam was trying to prevail
upon him to go quietly to bed.  All sorts of queer things were mixed up
with it--hunting cries, bits of songs, invectives against Hanoverians
and Dissenters, and I scarcely know what else.

"Who is that wretched creature?" whispered Flora to me.

I had recognised the voice, and was able to answer.

"It is Mr Bagnall," said I, "the vicar of Dornthwaite."

"A minister!" was Flora's answer, in an indescribable tone.

"Oh, that does not make any difference," I replied, "with the clergy
about here.  Mr Digby is too old for it now, but I have heard say that
when he was a younger man, he used to be as uproarious as anybody."

At last Sam's patience seemed to be exhausted, and he and Will between
them lifted the reverend gentleman off his feet, and carried him to bed
despite his struggles.  At least I supposed so from what I heard.  About
ten minutes later, Sam and Will passed our door on their way back.

"Yon's a bonnie loon to ca' a minister," I heard Sam say as he went
past.  "But what could ye look for in a Prelatist?"

"He gets up i' t' pu'pit, and tells us our dooty, of a Sunda', but who
does hisn of a Monda, think ye?" was old Will's response.

The footsteps passed on, and I was just going to relieve my feelings by
a good laugh, when I was stopped and astonished by Flora's voice.

"O Cary, how dreadful!"

"Dreadful!" said I, "what is dreadful?"

"That wretched man!" she said in a tone which matched her words.

"He does not think himself a wretched man, by any means," I said.  "His
living is worth quite two hundred a year, and he has a little private
property beside.  They say he does not stand at all a bad chance for a
deanery.  His wife is not a pleasant woman, I believe; she has a temper:
but his son is carrying all before him at college, and his daughters are
thought to be among the prettiest girls in the county."

"Has he children?  Poor things!" sighed Flora.

"Why, Flora, I cannot make you out," said I.  "I could understand your
being uncomfortable about Angus; but what is Mr Bagnall to you?"

"Cary!"  I cannot describe the tone.

"Well?" said I.

"Is the Lord nothing to me?" she said, almost passionately; "nor the
poor misguided souls committed to that man's charge, for which he will
have to give account at the last day?"

"My dear Flora, you do take things so seriously!"  I said, trying to
laugh; but her tone and words had startled me, for all that.

"It is well to take sin seriously," said she.  "Men are serious enough
in Hell; and sin is its antechamber."

"You don't suppose poor Mr Bagnall will be sent there, for a little too
much champagne at a hunt-supper?" said I.  I did not like it, for I
thought of Father.  I have heard him singing "Old King Cole" and half a
dozen more songs, all mixed up in a heap, after a hunt-supper.  "Men
always do it there.  And I can assure you Mr Bagnall is thought a
first-class preacher.  People go to hear him even from Cockermouth."

"That is worse than ever," said Flora, "A man who preaches the truth and
serves the Devil--that must be awful!"

"Flora, you do say the queerest things!" said I.  "Does your father
never do so?"

"My father?" she answered in an astonished, indignant voice.  "_My
father_!  Cary! but,"--with a change in the tone--"you do not know him,
of course.  Why, Cary, if he knew that Angus had been for once in the
midst of such a scene as that, I think it would break my father's
heart."

I wondered how Angus had fared, and if he were singing snatches of
Scotch songs in some bed-chamber at the other end of the long gallery,
but I had not the cruelty to say it to Flora.

When we came down the next morning, I was curious to peep into the
dining-room, just to see what it was like.  The wreck of a ship is the
only thing I can think of, which might look like it.  Half the chairs
were flung over in all directions, and two broken to pieces; a quantity
of broken glass was heaped both on the floor and the table; dark wine
stains on the carpet, and pools upon the table, not yet dry, were
sufficient signs of what the night had been.  Bessy stood in the window,
duster in hand, picking up the chairs, and setting them in their places.

"Didn't the gentlemen enjoy theirselves, Miss Cary?" said she.  "My
word, but they made a night on't!  I'd like to ha' been wi' 'em, just
for to see!"

I made no answer beyond nodding my head.  Flora's words came back to
me,--"It is well to take sin seriously."  I could not laugh and jest, as
I dare say I should have done but for them.

When I came into the parlour, I only found three of all the gentlemen in
the house,--Father, Mr Keith, and Ambrose Catterall.  I thought Father
seemed rather cross, and he was finding fault with everybody for
something.  Sophy's hair was rough, and Hatty had put on a gown he did
not like, and Fanny's ruffle had a hole in it; and then he turned round
and scolded my Aunt Kezia for not having us in better order.  My Aunt
Kezia said never a word, but I felt sure from her drawn brow and set
lips, as she stood making tea, that she could have said a great many.
Mr Keith was silent and grave.  Ambrose Catterall seemed to think it
his duty to make fun for everybody, and he laughed and joked and
chattered away finely.  I asked where old Mr Catterall was.

"Oh, in bed with a headache," laughed Ambrose, "like everybody else this
morning."

"Speak for yourself," said Mr Keith.  "I have not one."

"Well, mine's going," returned Ambrose, gaily.  "A cup of Mrs Kezia's
capital tea will finish it off."

"Finish what off?" asked my Aunt Kezia.

"My last night's headache," said he.

"That tea must have come from Heaven, then, instead of China," replied
she.  "Nay, Ambrose Catterall; it will take blood to finish off the
consequence of your doings last night."

"Why, Mrs Kezia, are you going to fight me?" asked he, laughing.

"Young man, why don't you fight the Devil?" answered my Aunt Kezia,
looking him full in the face.  "He does not pay good wages, Ambrose."

"Never saw the colour of his money yet," said Ambrose, who seemed
extremely amused.

"I wish you never may," quoth my aunt.  "But I sadly fear you are going
the way to do it."

The more Ambrose laughed, the graver my Aunt Kezia seemed to grow.
Before we had finished breakfast, Angus came languidly into the room.

"What ails you, old comrade?" said Ambrose; and Flora's eyes looked up
with the same question, but I think there were tears on the brown
velvet.

"Oh, my head aches conf--I mean--abominably," said Angus, flushing.

"Take a hair of the dog that bit you," suggested Ambrose; "unless you
think humble pie will agree with you better.  I fancy Miss Drummond
would rather help you to that last."

I saw a flash in Mr Keith's eyes, which gave me the idea that he might
not be a pleasant person to meet alone in a glen at midnight, if he had
no scruples as to what he did.

"You hold your tongue!" growled Angus.

"By all means, if you prefer it," said Ambrose, lightly.

One after another, the gentlemen strolled in,--all but two who stayed in
bed till afternoon, and of these Mr Catterall was one.  Among the last
to appear was Mr Bagnall; but he looked quite fresh and gay when he
came, like Ambrose.

"We had to say grace for ourselves, Mr Bagnall," said Father.  "Sit
down, and let me help you to some of this turkey pie."

"Thanks--if you please.  What a lovely morning!" was Mr Bagnall's
answer.  "The young ladies look like fresh rosebuds with the dew on
them."

"We have not you gentlemen to thank for it, if we do," broke in Hatty.
"Our slumbers were all the less profound for your kind assistance.  Oh
yes, you can look, Mr Bagnall!  I mean _you_.  I heard `Sally in our
Alley' about one o'clock this morning."

"No, was I singing that, now?" said Mr Bagnall, laughing.  "I did not
know I got quite so far.  But at a hunt-supper, you know, everything is
excusable."

"Would you give me a reference to the passage which says so, Mr
Bagnall?" came from behind the tea-pot.  "I should like to note it in my
Bible."

Mr Bagnall laughed again, but rather uncomfortably.

"My dear Mrs Kezia, you do not imagine the Bible has anything to do
with a hunt-supper?"

"It is to be hoped I don't, or I should be woefully disappointed," she
answered.  "But I always thought, Mr Bagnall, that the Word of God and
the ministers of God should have something to do with one another."

"Kezia, keep your Puritan notions to yourself!" roared Father from the
other end of the table; and he put some words before it which I would
rather not write.  "I can't think," he went on, looking round, "wherever
Kezia can have picked up such mad whims as she has.  For a sister of
mine to say such a thing to a clergyman--I declare it makes my hair
stand on end!"

"Your hair may lie down again, Brother.  I've done," said my Aunt Kezia,
coolly.  "As to where I got it, I should think you might know.  It runs
in the blood.  And I suppose Deborah Hunter was your grandmother as well
as mine."

Father's reply was full of the words I do not want to write, but it was
not a compliment to his grandmother.

"Come, Mrs Kezia," said Mr Bagnall, "let us make it up by glasses all
round, and a toast to the sweet Puritan memory of Mrs Deborah Hunter."

"No, thank you," said my Aunt Kezia.  "As to Deborah Hunter, she has
been a saint in Heaven these thirty years, and finely she'd like it (if
she knew it) to have you drinking yourselves drunk in her honour.  But
let me tell you--and you can say what you like after it--she taught me
that `the chief end of man was to glorify God, and to enjoy Him for
ever.'  Your notion seems to be that the chief end of man is to glorify
himself, and to enjoy him for ever.  I think mine's the better of the
two: and as to yours, the worst thing I wish any of you is that you may
get mine instead of it.  Now then, Brother, I've had my say, and you can
have yours."

And not another word did my Aunt Kezia say, though Father stormed, and
the other gentlemen laughed and joked, and paid her sarcastic
compliments, all the while breakfast lasted.  There were two who were
silent, and those were Angus and Mr Keith.  Angus seemed too poorly and
unhappy to take any interest in the matter; and as to Mr Keith, I
believe in his heart (if I read it right in his eyes) that he was
perfectly delighted with my Aunt Kezia.

"The young ladies did not honour us by riding to the meet," said Mr
Bagnall at last, looking at that one of us who sat nearest him--which,
by ill luck, happened to be Flora.

"No, Sir.  I do not think my aunt would have allowed it; but--" Flora
stopped, and cast her eyes on her plate.

"But if she had, you would have been pleased to come?" suggested Mr
Bagnall, rubbing his hands.

He spoke in that disagreeable way in which some men do speak to girls--I
do not know what to call it.  It is a condescending, patronising kind of
manner, as if--yes, that is it!--as if they wanted to amuse themselves
by hearing the opinion of something so totally incapable of forming one.
I wish they knew how the girls long to shake the nonsense out of them.

But Flora did not lose her temper, as I should have done: she held her
own with a quiet dignity which I envied, but could never have imitated.

"Pardon me, Sir.  I was about to say the direct contrary--that if my
aunt had allowed it, I for one would rather not have gone."

"Afraid of a fall, eh?" laughed Mr Bagnall.  "Well, ladies are not
expected to be as venturesome as men."

Now, why do men always fancy that it is a woman's duty to do what men
expect her?  I cannot see it one bit.

"I was not afraid of that, Sir," said Flora.

Father, with whom Flora is a favourite, was listening with a smile.  I
believe Aunt Drummond was his pet sister.

"No?  Why, what then?" said Mr Bagnall, shaking the pepper over his
turkey pie until I wondered what sort of a throat he would have when he
had finished it.

"I am afraid of hardening my heart, Sir," said Flora, in her calm
decisive way.

"Hardening your heart, girl!  What do you mean?" said Father.
"Hardening your heart by riding to hounds!"

"A little puzzling, certainly," said Sir Robert Dacre, who sat opposite.
"We must ask Miss Drummond to explain."

He did not speak in that disagreeable way that Mr Bagnall did; but
Flora flushed up when she found three gentlemen looking at her, and
asking her for an explanation.

"I mean," she answered, "that one hardens one's heart by taking pleasure
in anything which gives another creature pain.  But I beg your pardon;
indeed I did not mean to put myself forward."

"No, no, child; we drew you forward," said Father, kindly.  He gets over
his tempers in a moment, and he seemed to have quite forgotten the
passage at arms with my Aunt Kezia.

"Still, I do not quite understand," said Sir Robert, not at all
unkindly.  "Who is the injured creature in this case, Miss Drummond?"

Flora's colour rose again.  "The hare, Sir," she said.

"The hare!" cried Mr Bagnall, leaning back in his chair to laugh.
"Well, Miss Flora, you are quixotic."

"May I quote my father, Sir?" was her reply.  "He says that Don Quixote
(supposing him a real person, which I take it he was not) was one of the
noblest men the world ever saw, only the world was not ready for him."

"The world not ready for him?  No, I should think not!" laughed Father.
"Not just yet, my little lady-errant."

Flora smiled quietly.  "Perhaps it will be, some day.  Uncle Courtenay,"
she said.

"When the larks fall from the sky--eh, Miss Flora?" said Mr Bagnall,
rubbing his hands again in that odious way he has.

"When `they shall not hurt nor destroy in all My holy mountain,'" was
Flora's soft answer.

"Surely you don't suppose that literal?" replied Mr Bagnall, laughing.
"Why, you must be as bad--I had nearly said as _mad_--as my next
neighbour, Everard Murthwaite (of Holme Cultram, you know," he explained
aside to Father).  "Why, he has actually got a notion that the Jews are
to be restored to Palestine!  Whoever heard of such a mad idea?  Only
think--the Jews!"

"Ridiculous nonsense!" said Father.

"Is it not usually the case," asked Mr Keith, who till then had hardly
spoken, "that the world counts as mad the wisest men in it?"

"Why, Mr Keith, you must be one of them!" cried Mr Bagnall.

"Of the wise men?  Thank you!" said Mr Keith, drily.

There was a laugh at this.

"But I can tell you of something queerer still," Mr Bagnall went on.
"Old Cis Crosthwaite, in my parish, says she knows her sins are
forgiven."

Such exclamations came from most of the gentlemen at that!
"Preposterous!" said one.  "Ridiculous!" said another.  "Insufferable
presumption!" cried a third.

"Cis Crosthwaite!" said Sir Robert Dacre, more quietly.

"Yes, Cis Crosthwaite," repeated Mr Bagnall; "an old wretch of a woman
who has never been any better than she should be, and whom I met
sticking hedges only last winter.  Her son Joe is the worst poacher in
the parish."

All the gentlemen seemed to think that most dreadful.  I do not know why
it is they always appear to reckon snaring wild game which belongs
nobody a more wicked thing than breaking all the Ten Commandments.
Would it not have been in them if it were?

Only Sir Robert Dacre said, "Poor old creature! don't let us saddle her
with Joe's sins.  I dare say she has plenty of her own."

"Plenty?  I should think so.  She is a horrid old wretch," answered Mr
Bagnall.  "And do but think, if this miserable creature has not the
arrogance and presumption to say that her sins are forgiven!"

"I suppose Christ died that somebody's sins might be forgiven?" said Mr
Keith, in his quiet way.

"Of course, but those are respectable people," Mr Bagnall said, rather
indignantly.

"Before or after the forgiveness?" asked Mr Keith.

"Sir," said Mr Bagnall, rather stiffly, "I am not accustomed to discuss
such matters as these at table."

"Are you not?  I am," said Mr Keith, quite simply.

"But," continued Mr Bagnall, "I thought every one understood the
orthodox view--namely, that a man must do his best, and practise virtue,
and lead a proper sort of life, and then, when God Almighty sees you a
decent and fit person, and endeavouring to be good He helps you with His
grace."  [Note 2.]

"Of course!" said the Vicar of Sebergham--I suppose by way of Amen.

"Men are to do their best, then, and practise these virtues, in the
first instance, without any assistance from God's grace?  That Gospel
sounds rather ill tidings," was Mr Keith's answer.

Everybody was listening by this time.  Sir Robert Dacre, I thought,
seemed secretly diverted; and Hatty's eyes were gleaming with fun.
Father looked uncomfortable, and as if he did not know what Mr Keith
would be at.  From my Aunt Kezia little nods of satisfaction kept coming
to what he said.

"Sir," demanded Mr Bagnall, looking his adversary straight in the face,
"are you not orthodox?"

He spoke rather in the tone in which he might have asked, "Are you not
honest?"

"May I ask you to explain the word, before I answer?" was Mr Keith's
response.

"I mean, are you one of these Methodists?"

"Certainly not.  I belong to the Kirk of Scotland."

Mr Bagnall's "Oh!" seemed to say that some at any rate of Mr Keith's
queer notions might be accounted for, if he were so unfortunate as to
have been born in a different Church.

"But," pursued Mr Keith, "seeing that the Church of England, and the
Kirk of Scotland, and the Methodists, all accept the Word of God as the
rule of faith, they should all, methinks, be sound in the faith, if that
be what you mean by `orthodox.'"

"By `orthodox,'" said the Vicar of Sebergham, after a sonorous clearing
of his throat, "I understand a man who keeps to the Articles of the
Church, and does not run into any extravagances and enthusiasm."

"Hear him!" cried Mr Bagnall, as if he were at a Tory meeting.  Hatty
burst out laughing, but immediately smothered it in her handkerchief.

"I do hear him, and with pleasure," said Mr Keith.  "I am no friend to
extravagance, I assure you.  Let a Churchman keep to the Bible and the
Articles, and I ask no more of him.  But excuse me if I say that we are
departing from the question before us, which was the propriety, or
impropriety, of one saying that his sins were forgiven.  May I ask why
you object to that?--and is the objection to the forgiveness, or to the
proclamation of it?"

"Sir," said Mr Bagnall, warmly, "I think it presumption--arrogance--
horrible self-conceit."

"To have forgiveness?--or to say so?"

"I cannot answer such a question, Sir!" said Mr Bagnall, getting red in
the face, and seizing the pepper-box once more, with which he dusted his
pie recklessly.  "When a man sets himself up to be better than his
neighbours in that way, it is scandalous--perfectly scandalous, Sir!"

"`Better than his neighbours!'" repeated Mr Keith, as if he were
considering the question.  "If a pardoned criminal be better than his
neighbours, I suppose the neighbours are worse criminals?"

"Sir, you misunderstand me.  They fancy themselves better than others."
Mr Bagnall was getting angry.

"But seeing all are criminals alike, and they own it every Sunday," was
Mr Keith's answer, "does it not look rather odd that an objection
should be made to one of them stating that he has been pardoned?  Is it
because the rest are unpardoned, and are conscious of it?"

"Come, friends!" said Sir Robert, before Mr Bagnall could reply.  "Let
us not lose our tempers, I beg.  Mr Keith is a Scotsman, and such are
commonly good reasoners and love a tilt; and 'tis but well in a young
man to keep his wits in practice.  But we must not get too far, you
know."

"Just so! just so!" saith Father, who I think was glad to have a stop
put to this sort of converse.  "Mr Bagnall, I am sure, bears no malice.
Sir Robert, when do the Holme Cultram hounds meet next?"

Mr Bagnall growled something, I know not what, and gave himself up to
his pie for the rest of the time, Mr Keith smiled, and said no more.
But I know in whose hands I thought the victory rested.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Note 1.  The word "ticket" was still spelt "etiquette."

Note 2.  These exact expressions are quoted in Whitefield's sermons.



CHAPTER FOUR.

THINGS BEGIN TO HAPPEN.

  "The untrue liveth only in the heart
  Of vain humanity, which fain would be
  Its own poor centre and circumference."

  REV  HORATIUS BONAR, D.D.

This afternoon I went up the Scar by myself.  First I climbed right to
the top, and after looking round a little, as I always like to do on the
top of a mountain, I went down a few yards to the flat bit where the old
Roman wall runs, and sat down on the grass just above.  It was a lovely
day.  I had not an idea that any one was near the place but myself, and
I was just going to sing, when to my surprise I heard a voice on the
other side of the Roman wall.  It was Angus Drummond's.

"Duncan Keith, why don't you say something?"  He broke out suddenly, in
a petulant tone--rather the tone of a child who knows it has been
naughty, and wants to get the scolding over which it feels sure is
coming some time.

"What do you wish me to say?"

Mr Keith's tone was cold and constrained, I thought.

"Why don't you tell me I am an unhanged reprobate, and that you are
ashamed to be seen walking with me?  You know you are thinking it."

"No, Angus.  I was thinking something very different."

"What, then?" asked Angus, sulkily.

"`Doth He not leave the ninety and nine in the wilderness, and go after
that which is lost, _until He find it_?'"

There was no coldness in Mr Keith's tone now.

"What has that got to do with it?" growled Angus in his throat.

"Angus," was the soft answer, "the sheep sometimes makes it a very hard
journey for Him."

I know I ought to have risen and crept away long before this: but I did
not.  It was not right of me, but I sat on.  I knew they could not see
me through the wall, nor could they get across it at any place so near
that I could not be gone far enough before they could catch sight of me.

"I suppose," said Angus, in the same sort of sulky murmur, "that is your
way of telling me, Mr Keith, that I am a miserable sinner."

"Are you not?"

"Miserable enough, Heaven knows!  But, Duncan, I don't see why you, and
Flora, and Mrs Kezia, and all the good folks, or the folks who think
themselves extra good, which comes to the same thing--"

"Does it?  I was not aware of that," said Mr Keith.

"I can't see," Angus went on, "why you must all turn up the whites of
your eyes like a duck in thunder, and hold up your hands in pious horror
at me, because I have done just once what every gentleman in the land
does every week, and thinks nothing of it.  If you had not been brought
up in a hen-coop, and ruled like a copy-book, you would not be so con--
so hideously strict and particular!  Just ask Ambrose Catterall whether
there is any weight on his conscience; or ask that jolly parson, who
tackled you and Flora at breakfast, what he has to say to it.  I'll be
bound he will read prayers next Sabbath with as much grace and unction
as if he had never been drunk in his life.  And because I get let in
just once, why--"

Angus paused as if to consider how to finish his sentence, and Mr Keith
answered one point of his long speech, letting all the rest, go.

"Is it just this once, Angus?"

"I suppose you mean that night at York, when I got let in with those
fellows of Greensmith's," growled Angus, more grumpily than ever.  "Now,
Duncan, that's not generous of you.  I did the humble and penitent for
that, and you should not cast it up to me.  Just that time and this!"

"And no more, Angus?"

Angus muttered something which did not reach me.

"Angus, you know why I came with you?"

"Yes, I know well enough why you came with me," said Angus, bitterly.
"Just because that stupid old meddler, Helen Raeburn, took it into her
wooden head that I could not take care of myself, and talked my father
into sending me with you now, instead of letting me go the other way
round by myself!  Could not take care of myself, forsooth!"

"Have you done it?"

"I hadn't it to do.  Mr Duncan Keith was to take care of me, just as if
I had been a baby--stuff!  There is no end to the folly of old women!"

"I think young men might sometimes match them.  Well, Angus, I have
taken as much care as you let me.  But you deceived me, boy.  I know
more about it than you think.  It was not one or two transgressions that
let you down to this pitch.  I know you had a private key from Rob
Greensmith, and let yourself in and out when I believed you asleep."

Angus sputtered out some angry words, which I did not catch.

"No.  You are mistaken.  Leigh did not tell of you or his brother.  Your
friend Robert told me himself.  He wanted to get out of the scrape, and
he did not care about leaving you in it.  The friendship of the wicked
is not worth much, Angus.  But if I had not known it, I should still
have felt perfectly sure that there had been more going on than you ever
confessed to me.  Three months since, Angus, you would not have used
words which you have used this day.  You would not have spoken so
lightly of being `let in'--let into what?  Just stop and think.  And
twice to-day--once in Flora's presence--you have only just stopped your
tongue from a worse word than that.  Would you have said such a thing to
your father before we left Abbotscliff?"

"Uncle Courtenay was as drunk as any of them last night," Angus blurted
out.

I did not like to hear that of Father.  Till now I never thought much
about such things, except that they were imperfections which men had and
women had not, and the women must put up with them.  Sins?--well, yes, I
suppose getting drunk is a sin, if you come to think about it; but so is
getting into a passion, and telling falsehoods, and plenty more things
which one thinks little or nothing about, because one sees everybody do
them every day.  It is only the extra good people, like my Aunt Kezia,
and Flora, and Mr Keith, that put on grave faces about things of that
kind.

But stay!  God must be better than the extra good people.  Then will He
not think even worse of such things than they do?

It was just because those three seemed to think it so awful, and to be
inclined to make a fuss over it, that I did not like to hear what Angus
said about Father.  Grandmamma never thought anything about it; she
always said drinking and gaming were gentlemanly vices, which the King
himself--(I mean, of course, the Elector, but Grandmamma said the
King)--need not be ashamed of practising.

I listened rather uneasily for Mr Keith's answer.  I am beginning to
feel a good deal of respect for his opinion and himself, and I did not
want to hear him say anything about Father that was not agreeable.  But
he put it quietly aside.

"If you please, Angus, we will let other people alone.  Both you and I
shall find our own sins quite enough to repent of, I expect.  You have
not answered my question, Angus."

"What question?" grumbled Angus.  I fancy he did not want to answer it.

"Would you, three months since, have let your father see and hear what
you have let me do within even the last week?"

Angus growled something in the bottom of his throat which I could not
make out.

Mr Keith's tone changed suddenly.

"Angus, dear old fellow, are you happier now than you were then?"

"Duncan, I am the most miserable wretch that ever lived!  I want no
preaching to, I can tell you.  That last text my father preached from
keeps tolling in my ear like a funeral bell--and it is all the worse
because it comes in his voice: `Remember from whence thou art fallen!'
Don't I remember it?  Do I want telling whence I have fallen?  Haven't I
made a thousand resolves never, _never_ to fail again, and the next time
I get into company, all my resolves melt away and my hard knots come
undone, and I feel as strong as a spoonful of water, and any of them can
lead me that tries, like an animal with a ring through his nose?"

"Water is not a bad comparison, Angus, if you look at both sides of it.
What is stronger than water, when the wind blows it with power?  And you
know who is compared to the wind.  `Awake, O North Wind, and come, Thou
South; blow upon my garden, that the spices thereof may flow out.'  It
is the wind of God's Spirit that we want, to blow the water--powerless
of itself--in the right direction.  It will carry all before it then."

"Oh, yes, all that sounds very well," said Angus, but in a pleasanter
tone than before--not so much like a big growling dog.  "But you don't
know, Duncan--you don't know!  You have no temptations.  What can you
know about it?  I tell you I _can't_ keep out of it.  It is no good
talking."

"`No temptations!'  I wish that were true.  But you are quite right as
to yourself; you cannot keep out of it.  Do you mean to add that God
cannot keep you?"

I did not hear Angus's reply, and I fancy it came in a gesture, and not
in words.  But Mr Keith said, very softly,--

"Angus, will you let Him keep you?"

Instead of the answer for which I was eagerly listening, another sound
came to my ear, which made me jump up in a hurry, almost without caring
whether I was heard or not.  That was the clock of Brocklebank Church
striking twelve.  I should be ever so much too late for dinner; and what
would my Aunt Kezia say?  I got away as quietly as I could for a few
yards, and then ran down the Scar as fast as I dared for fear of
falling, and came into the dining-room, feeling hot and breathless, just
as Cecilia, looking fresh and bright as a white lily, was entering it
from the other end.  The rest were seated at the table.  Of course Mr
Keith and Angus were not there.

"Caroline, where have you been?" saith my Aunt Kezia.

I trembled, for I knew what I had to expect when my Aunt Kezia said
Caroline in full.

"I am very sorry, Aunt," said I.  "I went up the Scar, and--well, I am
afraid I forgot all about the time."

My Aunt Kezia nodded, as if my frank confession satisfied her, and
Father said, "Good maid!" as I slipped into the chair where I always
sit, on his left hand.  But Cecilia, who was arranging her skirts just
opposite, said in that way which men seem to call charming, and women
always see through and despise (at least my Aunt Kezia says so),--

"Am I a little late?"

"Don't name it!" said Father.

"Dear, no, my charmer!" cried Hatty.  "Cary's shockingly late, of
course: but you are not--quite impossible."

Cecilia gave one of her soft smiles, and said no more.

I really am beginning to wish the Bracewells gone.  Yet it is not so
much on their own account, Amelia is vain and silly, and Charlotte rude
and romping; but I do not think either of them is a hypocrite.
Charlotte is not, I am sure; she lets you see the very worst side of
her: and Amelia's affectation is so plain and unmistakable, that it
cannot be called insincerity.  It is on account of that horrid Cecilia
that I want them to go, because I suppose she will go with them.  Yes,
truth is truth, and Cecilia is horrid.  I am getting quite frightened of
her.  I do not know what she means to do next: but she seems to me to be
always laying traps of some sort, and for somebody.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

I wonder if people ever do what you expect of them?  If somebody had
asked me to make a list of things that could not happen, I expect that I
should have put on it one thing that has just happened.

Sophy and I went up this morning to Goody Branscombe's cot, to take her
some wine and eggs from my Aunt Kezia.  Anne Branscombe thinks she is
failing, poor old woman, and my Aunt Kezia told her to beat up an egg
with a little wine and sugar, and give it to her fasting of a morning:
she thinks it a fine thing for keeping up strength.  We came round by
the Vicarage on our way back, and stepped in to see old Elspie.  We
found her ironing the Vicar's shirts and ruffles, and she put us in
rocking-chairs while we sat and talked.

Old Elspie wanted to know all we could tell her about Flora and Angus,
and I promised I would bring Flora to see her some day.  She says Mr
Keith--Mr Duncan Keith's father, that is--is the squire of Abbotscliff,
a very rich man, and a tremendous Tory.

"You're vara nigh strangers, young leddies," said Elspie, as she ironed
away.  "Miss Fanny, she came to see me a twa-three days back, and Miss
Bracewell wi' her; and there was anither young leddy, but I disremember
her name."

"Was it Charlotte Bracewell?" said Sophy.

"Na, na, I ken Miss Charlotte ower weel to forget her, though she has
grown a deal sin' I saw her afore.  This was a lassie wi' black hair,
and e'en like the new wood the minister has his dinner-table, wi' the
fine name--what ca' ye that, now?"

"Mahogany?" said I.

"Ay, it has some sic fremit soun'," said old Elspie, rather scornfully.
"I ken it was no sae far frae muggins [mugwort].  Mrs Sophy, my dear,
ha'e ye e'er suppit muggins in May?  'Tis the finest thing going for
keeping a lassie in gude health, and it suld be drinkit in the spring.
Atweel, what's her name wi' the copper-colourit e'en?"

"Cecilia Osborne," said I.  "What did you think of her, Elspie?"

The iron went up and down the Vicar's shirt-front, and I saw a curious
gathering together of old Elspie's lips--still she did not speak.  At
last Sophy said,--

"Couldn't you make up your mind about her, Elspie?"

"I had nae mickle fash about _that_, Mrs Sophy," said Elspeth, setting
down her iron on the stand with something like a bang.  "And gin I can
see through a millstane a wee bittie, she'll gi'e ye the chance to make
up yourn afore lang."

"Nay, mine's made up long since," answered Sophy.  "I shall see the back
of her with a deal more pleasure than I did her face a month ago.  Won't
you, Cary?"

"I don't like her the least bit," said I.

"Ye'll be wiser lassies, young leddies, gin ye're no ower ready to say
it," said Elspie, coolly.  "It was no ane o' _your_ white days when she
came to Brocklebank Fells.  Ay, weel, weel!  The Lord's ower a'."

As we went down the road, I said to Sophy, "What did old Elspie mean, do
you suppose?"

"I am afraid I can guess what she meant, Cary."

Sophy's tone was so strange that I looked up at her; and I saw her eyes
flashing and her lips set and white.

"Sophy! what is the matter?"  I cried.

"Don't trouble your little head, Cary," she said, kindly enough.  "It
will be trouble in plenty when it comes."

I could not get her to say more.  As we reached the door, Hatty came
dancing out to meet us.

  "`The rose is white, the rose is red,'--
  The sun gives light, Queen Anne is dead:
  Ladies with white and rosy hues,
  What will you give me for my news?"

"Hatty, you must have made that yourself!" said Sophy.

"I have, just this minute," laughed Hatty.  "Now then, who'll bid for my
news?"

"I dare say it isn't worth a farthing," said Sophy.

"Well, to you, perhaps not.  It may be rather mortifying.  My sweet
Sophia, you are the eldest of us, but your younger sister has stolen a
march on you.  You have played your cards ill, Miss Courtenay.  Fanny is
going to be the first of us married, unless I contrive to run away with
somebody in the interval.  I don't know whom--there's the difficulty."

"Well, I always thought she would be," said Sophy, quite
good-humouredly.  "She is the prettiest of us, is Fanny."

"So much obliged for the compliment!" gleefully cried Hatty.  "Cary,
don't you feel delighted?"

"Is Ephraim here now?"  I said, for of course I never thought of anybody
else.

"Ephraim!"  Hatty whirled round, laughing heartily.  "Ephraim, my dear,
will have to break his heart at leisure.  Ambrose Catterall has stolen a
march on _him_."

"You don't mean that Fanny and Ambrose are to be married!" cried Sophy,
with wide-open eyes.

"I do, Madam; and my Aunt Kezia is as mad as a hatter about it.  She
would have liked Ephraim for her nephew ever so much better than
Ambrose."

"Well, I do think!" exclaimed Sophy.  "If Ephraim did really care for
Fanny, she has used him shamefully."

"So _I_ think!" said Hatty.  "I mean to present him on his next birthday
with a dozen pocket-handkerchiefs, embroidered in the corner with an urn
and a willow-tree."

"An urn, you ridiculous child!" returned Sophy.  "That means that
somebody is dead."

"Don't throw cold water on my charming conceits!" pleaded Hatty.  "Now
go in and face my Aunt Kezia--if you dare."

We found her cutting out flannel petticoats in the parlour.  My Aunt
Kezia's brows were drawn together, and my Aunt Kezia's lips were thin;
and I trembled.  However, she took no note of us, but went on tearing up
flannel, and making little piles of it upon the table end.

Sophy, with heroic bravery, attacked the citadel at once.

"Well, Aunt, this is pretty news!"

"What is?" said my Aunt Kezia, standing up straight and stiff.

"Why, this about Fanny and Ambrose Catterall."

"Oh, that!  I wish there were nothing worse than that in _this_ world."
My Aunt Kezia spoke as if she would have preferred some other world,
where things went straighter than they do in this.

"Hatty said you were put out about it, Aunt."

"That's all Hatty knows.  I think 'tis a blunder, and Fanny will find it
out, likely enough.  But if that were all--Girls, 'tis nigh dinner-time.
You had better take your bonnets off."

"What is the matter with my Aunt Kezia?" said I to Sophy, as we went
up-stairs.

"Don't ask _me_!" said that young lady.

Half-way up-stairs we met Charlotte.

"Oh, what fun you have missed, you two!" cried she.  "Why didn't you
come home a little sooner?  I would not have lost it for a hundred
pounds."

"Lost what, Charlotte?"

"Lost _what_?  Ask my Aunt Kezia--now just you _do_!"

"My Aunt Kezia seems unapproachable," said Sophy.

Charlotte went off into a fit of laughter, and then slid down the
banister to the hall--a feat which my Aunt Kezia has forbidden her to
perform a dozen times at least.  We went forward, made ourselves ready
for dinner, and came down to the dining-parlour.

In the dining-room we found a curious group.  My Aunt Kezia looked as
stiff as whalebone; Father, pleased and radiant; Flora and Mr Keith
both seemed rather puzzled.  Angus was in a better temper than usual.
Charlotte was evidently full of something very funny, which she did not
want to let out; Cecilia, soft, serene, and velvety; Fanny looked
nervous and uncomfortable; Hatty, scornful; while Amelia was her usual
self.

When dinner was over, we went back to the parlour.  My Aunt Kezia
gathered up her heaps of flannel, gave one to Flora and another to me,
and began to stitch away at a third herself.  Amelia threw herself on
the sofa, saying she was tired to death; and I was surprised to see that
my Aunt Kezia took no notice.  Fanny sat down to draw; Hatty went on
with her knitting; Charlotte strolled out into the garden; and Cecilia
disappeared, I know not whither.

For an hour or more we worked away in solemn silence.  Hatty tried to
whisper once or twice to Fanny, making her blush and look uncomfortable;
but Fanny did not speak, and I fancy Hatty got tired.  Amelia went to
sleep.

At last, and all at once, Flora--honest, straightforward Flora--laid her
work on her knee, and looked up at my Aunt Kezia's grim set face.

"Aunt Kezia, will you tell me, is something the matter?"

"Yes, my dear," my Aunt Kezia seemed to snap out.  "Satan's the matter."

"I don't know what you mean, Aunt," said Flora.

"'Tis a mercy if you don't.  No, child, there is not much the matter for
you.  The matter's for me and these girls here.  Well, to be sure!
there's no fool like an old f--Caroline!  (I fairly jumped) can't you
look what you are doing?  You are herring-boning that seam on the wrong
side!"

Alas! the charge was true.  I cannot tell how or why it is, but if there
are two seams to anything, I am sure to do one of them on the wrong
side.  It is very queer.  I suppose there is something wanting in my
brains.  Hatty says--at least she did once when I said that--the brains
are wanting.

However, we sat on and sewed away, till at last Amelia woke up and went
up-stairs; Flora finished her petticoat, and my Aunt Kezia told her to
go into the garden.  Only we four sisters were left.  Then my Aunt Kezia
put down her flannel, wiped her spectacles, and looked round at us.

I knew something was coming, and I felt quite sure that it was something
disagreeable; but I could not form an idea what it was.

"Girls," said my Aunt Kezia, "I think you may as well hear at once that
I am going to leave Brocklebank."

I fairly gasped in astonishment.  Brocklebank without my Aunt Kezia!  It
sounded like hearing that the sun was going out of the sky.  I could not
imagine such a state of things.

"Is Sophy to be mistress, then?" said Fanny, blankly.

"Aunt Kezia, are you going to be married?" our impertinent Hatty wanted
to know.

"No, Hester," said my Aunt Kezia, shortly.  "At my time of life a woman
has a little sense left; or if she have not, she is only fit for Bedlam.
I do not think Sophy will be mistress, Fanny.  Somebody else is going
to take that place.  Otherwise, I should have stayed in it."

"What do you mean, Aunt Kezia?" said Fanny, speaking very slowly, and in
a bewildered sort of way.

Sophy said nothing.  I think she knew.  And all at once it seemed to
come over me--as if somebody had shut me up inside a lump of ice--what
it was that was going to happen.

"I mean, my dear," my Aunt Kezia replied quietly, "that your father
intends to marry again."

Sophy's face and tongue gave no sign that she had heard anything which
was news to her.  Fanny cried, "Never, surely!"  Hatty said, "How
jolly!" and then in a whisper to me, "Won't I lead her a life!"  I
believe I said nothing.  I felt shut up in that lump of ice.

"But, Aunt Kezia, what is to become of us all?  Are we to stay here, or
go with you?" asked Fanny.

"Your father desires me to tell you, my dears," said my Aunt Kezia,
"that he wishes to leave you quite free to please yourselves.  If you
choose to remain here, he will be glad to have you; and if any of you
like to come with me to Fir Vale, you will be welcome, and you know what
to expect."

"What are we to expect if we stop here?" asked Sophy, in a hard, dry
voice.

"That is more than I can say," was my Aunt Kezia's answer.

"But who is it?" said Fanny, in the same bewildered way.

"O Fanny, what a bat you are!" cried Hatty.

"I wonder you ask," answered Sophy.  "I have seen her fishing-rod for
ever so long.  Cecilia, of course."

"Cecilia!" screamed Fanny.  "I thought it was some middle-aged,
respectable gentlewoman."

Hatty burst out laughing.  I never felt less inclined to laugh.  My Aunt
Kezia had taken off her spectacles, and was going on with her tucks as
if nothing had happened.

"Well, I will think about it," said Sophy.  "I am not sure I shall
stay."

"_I_ shall stay," announced Hatty.  "I expect it will be grand fun.  She
will fill the house with company--that will suit me; and I shall just
look sharp after her and keep her in order."

"Hatty!" cried Fanny, in a shocked tone.

"I hope you will keep yourself in order," said my Aunt Kezia, drily.
"Little Cary, you have not spoken yet.  What do you want to do?"

Her voice softened as I had never heard it do before when she spoke to
me.  It touched me very much; yet I think I should have said the same
without it.

"O Aunt Kezia, please let me go with you!"

"Thank you, Cary," said my Aunt Kezia in the same tone.  "The old woman
is not to be left quite alone, then?  But it will be dull, child, for a
young thing like you."

"I would rather have it dull than lively the wrong way about," said I;
and Hatty broke out again.

"Would you!" said she, when she had done laughing.  "I wouldn't, I
promise you.  Sophy, don't you know a curate you could marry?  You had
better, if you can find one."

"Not one that has asked me," was Sophy's dry answer.  "You don't want
me, then, Miss Hatty?"

"You would be rather meddlesome, I am afraid," said Hatty, with charming
frankness.  "You would always be doing conscience."

"Don't you intend to keep one?" returned Sophy.

"I mean to lay it up in lavender," said Hatty, "and take it out on
Sundays."

"Hatty, if you haven't a care--"

"Please go on, Aunt Kezia.  Unfinished sentences are always awful
things, because you don't know how they are going to end."

"_You_'ll end in the lock-up, if you don't mind," said my Aunt Kezia;
"and if I were you, I wouldn't."

"I'll try to keep on this side the door," said Hatty, as lightly as
ever.  "And when is it to be, Aunt Kezia?"

"The month after next, I believe."

"Isn't Cecilia going home first, to see what her friends say about it?"

"She has none belonging to her, except an uncle and his family, and she
says they will be delighted to hear it.  Hatty, you had better get out
of the way of calling her Cecilia.  It won't do now, you know."

"But you don't mean, Aunt Kezia, that we are to call her Mother!" cried
Fanny, in a most beseeching tone.

"My dear, that must be as your father wishes.  He may allow you to call
her Mrs Courtenay.  That is what I shall call her."

"Isn't it dreadful!" said poor Fanny.

"One thing more I have to say," continued my Aunt Kezia, laying down her
flannel again and putting on her spectacles.  "Your father does not wish
you to be present at his marriage."

"Aunt Kezia!" came, I think, from us all--indignantly from Sophy,
sorrowfully from Fanny, petulantly from Hatty, and from me in sheer
astonishment.

"I suppose he has his reasons," said my Aunt Kezia; "but that being so,
I think Sophy had better go home for a while with the Bracewells, and
Hatty, too.  You, Cary, may go with Flora instead, if you like.  Fanny,
of course, is arranged for already, as she will be married by then, and
will only have to stop at home."

I thought I would very much rather go with Flora.

"I have had a letter from your Aunt Dorothea lately," my Aunt Kezia went
on, "in which she asks for Cary to pay her a visit next June.  But now
we are only in March.  So, as Cary must be somewhere between times, and
I think she would be better out of the way, she will go to Abbotscliff
with Flora--unless, my dear," she added, turning to me, "you would
rather be at Bracewell Hall?  You may, if you like."

"I would rather be at Abbotscliff, very much, Aunt Kezia," said I; and I
think Aunt Kezia was pleased.

"Aunt Kezia, don't send me away!" pleaded Sophy.  "Do let me stay and
help you to settle at Fir Vale.  I should hate to stay at Bracewell, and
I should just like bustling about and helping you in that way.  Won't
you let me?"

"Well, my dear, we will see," said my Aunt Kezia; and I think she was
pleased with Sophy too.  Hatty declared that Bracewell would just suit
her, and she would not stay at any price, if she had leave to choose.
So it seems to be settled in that way.  Fanny will be married on the
30th,--that is three weeks hence; and the week after, Hatty goes with
the Bracewells, and I with Flora, to their own homes; and my Aunt Kezia
and Sophy will remain here, and only leave the house on the evening
before the marriage.

It seems very odd that Father should have wished not to have us at his
wedding.  Was it Cecilia who did not wish it?  But I am not to call her
Cecilia any more.

When my cousins came in for tea, they were told too.  Charlotte cried,
"Well, I never!" for which piece of vulgarity she was sharply pulled up
by my Aunt Kezia.  Amelia fanned herself--she always does, whatever time
of year it may be--and languidly remarked, "Dear!"  Angus said, "Castor
and Pollux!" for which he also got rebuked.  And after a sort of "Oh!"
Flora said nothing, but looked very sorrowfully at us.  Cec--I mean Miss
Osborne--did not appear at all until tea was nearly over, and then she
came in from the garden, and Mr Parmenter with her, that everlasting
eyeglass stuck in his eye.  I do so dislike the man.

Father never comes to tea.  He says it is only women's rubbish, and
laughs at Ephraim Hebblethwaite because he says he likes it.  I fancy
few men drink tea.  My Uncle Charles never does, I know; but my Aunt
Dorothea says she could not exist a day without tea and cards.

I wonder if it will be pleasant to stay with my Aunt Dorothea.  I
believe she and my Uncle Charles are living in London now.  I should
like dearly to see London, and the fine shops, and the lions in the
Tower, and Ranelagh, and all the grand people.  And yet, somehow, I feel
just a little bit uneasy about it, as if I were going into some place
where I did not know what I should find, and it might be something that
would hurt me.  I do not feel that about Abbotscliff.  I expect it will
be pleasant there, only perhaps rather dull.  And I want to see my Uncle
Drummond, and Flora's friend, Annas Keith.  I wonder if she is like her
brother.  And I never saw a Presbyterian minister, nor indeed a minister
of any sort.  I do hope my Uncle Drummond will not be like Mr Bagnall,
and I hope all the gentlemen in the South are not like that odious Mr
Parmenter.

Flora seems very much pleased about my going back with her.  I do not
know why, but I fancied Angus did not quite like it.  Can he be afraid
of my telling his father the story of the hunt-supper?  He knows nothing
of what I heard up on the Scar.

I do hope Ephraim Hebblethwaite is not very unhappy about Fanny.  I
should think it must be dreadful, when you love any one very much, to
see her go and give herself quite away to somebody else.  And Ambrose
thinks of going to live in Cheshire, where his uncle has a large farm,
and he has no children, so the farm will come to Ambrose some day; and
his uncle, Mr Minshull, would like him to come and live there now.  Of
course, if that be settled so, we shall lose Fanny altogether.

Must there always be changes and break-ups in this world?  I do not mean
the change of death: that, we know, must come.  But why must there be
all these other changes?  Why could we not go on quietly as we were?  It
seems now as if we should never be the same any more.

If that uncle of Cecilia's would only have tied her to the leg of a
table, or locked her up in her bed-chamber, or done something to keep
her down there in the South, so that she had never come to torment us!

I suppose I ought not to wish that, if she makes Father happier.  Ay,
but will she make him happy?  That is just what I am uncomfortable
about!  I don't believe she cares a pin for him, though I dare say she
likes well enough to be the Squire's lady, and queen it at Brocklebank.
Somehow, I cannot trust those tawny eyes, with their sidelong glances.
Am I very wicked, or is she?

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Will things never give over happening?

This morning, just after I came down--there were only my Aunt Kezia, Mr
Keith, Flora, and me in the dining-parlour--we suddenly heard the great
bell of Brocklebank Church begin to toll.  My Aunt Kezia set down the
chocolate-pot.

"It must be somebody who has died suddenly, poor soul!" cried she.
"Maybe, Ellen Armathwaite's baby: it looked very bad when I saw it last,
on Thursday.  Hark!"

The bell stopped tolling, and we listened for the sound which would tell
us the sex and age of the departed.

"One!"  Then silence.

That meant a man.  Ellen Armathwaite's baby girl it could not be.  Then
the bell began again, and we counted.  It tolled on up to twenty--
thirty--forty: we could not think who it could be.

"Surely not Farmer Catterall!" said my Aunt Kezia, "I have often felt
afraid of an apoplexy for him."

But the bell went on past sixty, and we knew it was not Farmer
Catterall.

"Is it never going to stop?" said Flora, when it had passed eighty.

My Aunt Kezia went to the door, and calling Sam, bade him go out and
inquire.  Still the bell tolled on.  It stopped just as Sam came in, at
ninety-six.

"Who is it, Sam?--one of the old bedesmen?"

"Nay, Mrs Kezia; puir soul, 'tis just the auld Vicar!"

"Mr Digby!" we all cried together.

"Ay; my mither found him deid i' his bed early this morrow.  She's come
up to tell ye, an' to ask gin' ye can spare me to go and gi'e a haun',
for that puir witless body, Mr Anthony Parmenter, seems all but daft."

Miss Osborne and Amelia came in together, and I saw Cecilia turn very
white.  (Oh dear! how shall I give over calling her Cecilia?)  My Aunt
Kezia told them what had happened, and I thought she looked relieved.

"What ails Mr Parmenter?" asked my Aunt Kezia.

"'Deed, and what ails a fule onie day?" said Sam, always more honest
than soft-spoken.  "He's just as ill as a bit lassie--fair frichtened o'
his auld uncle, now he is deid, that ne'er did him a bawbee's worth o'
harm while he was alive.  My mither says she's vara sure he'll be here
the morn, begging and praying ye to tak' him in and keep him safe frae
his puir auld uncle's ghaist.  Hech, sirs!  I'll ghaist him, gin' he
comes my way."

"Now, Sam, keep a civil tongue in your head," quoth my Aunt Kezia, "and
don't let me hear of your playing tricks on Mr Parmenter or any one
else.  You should be old enough to have some sense by this time.  I will
come out and speak to your mother in a moment.  Yes, I suppose we must
let you go.  What cuckoos there are in this world, to be sure!"

But Mr Parmenter did not wait till to-morrow--he came up this
afternoon, just as Sam said he would.  Father was not at home, and to my
surprise my Aunt Kezia would not take him in, but sent him on to Farmer
Catterall's.  I do not think the tawny eyes liked it, for though they
were mostly bent on the ground, I saw them give one sidelong flash at my
Aunt Kezia which did not look to me like loving-kindness.

I feel to-night what I think Angus means when he says that he is flat.
Everything feels flat.  Fanny is gone--she was married on Saturday.
Amelia, Charlotte, and Hatty set forth on Tuesday, and they are gone.  I
thought that Ce--Miss Osborne would have gone with them, and have
returned by-and-by; but she stays on, and will do so, I hear, almost
till my Aunt Kezia goes, when Mrs Hebblethwaite has asked her to stay
at the Fells Farm for the last few days before the wedding.  It is
settled now that my Aunt Kezia and Sophy stay here till the day before
it.  It does seem so queer for Sophy to be here till then, and not be at
the wedding!  I don't believe it is Father's doing.  It is not like him.
Flora, Angus, Mr Keith, and I are to start to-morrow; but Mr Keith
only goes with us as far as Carlisle--that is, the first day's journey;
then he leaves us for Newcastle, where he has some sort of business
(that horrid word!), and I go on with my cousins to Abbotscliff.  We
shall be met at Carlisle by a Scots gentleman who is travelling thence
to Selkirk, and is a friend of my Uncle Drummond.  He goes in his own
chaise, with two mounted servants, and both he and they are armed, so I
hope we shall get clear of freebooters on the Border.  He has nobody
with him, and says he shall have plenty of room in the chaise.  It is
very lucky that this Mr Cameron should just be going at the same time
as we are.  I don't think Angus would be much protection, though I
should not wish him to know I said so.

If Ephraim Hebblethwaite have broken his heart, he behaves very funnily.
He was not only at Fanny's wedding, but was best man; and he looks
quite well and happy.  I begin to think that we must have been mistaken
in guessing that he cared for Fanny.  Perhaps it only amused him to talk
to her.

Fanny's wedding was very smart and gay, and everybody came to it.  The
bridesmaids were we three, Esther Langridge, and two cousins of
Ambrose's, whose names are Annabel Catterall and Priscilla Minshull.  I
rather liked Annabel, but Priscilla was horrid.  (Sophy says I say
"horrid" too often, and about all sorts of things.  But if people and
things are horrid, how am I to help saying it?)  I am sure Priscilla
Minshull was horrid.  She reminded me of Angus's saying about turning up
one's eyes like a duck in thunder.  I never watched a duck in thunder,
and I don't know whether it turns up its eyes or it does not: only
Priscilla did.  She seemed to think us all (my Aunt Kezia said) no
better than the dirt she walked on.  And I am sure she need not be so
stuck-up, for Mr James Minshull, her father, is only a parson, and not
only that, but a chaplain too: so Priscilla is not anybody of any
consequence.  I said so to Flora, and she replied that Priscilla would
be much less likely to be proud if she were.

I was dreadfully tired on Sunday.  We had been so hard at work all the
fortnight before, first making the wedding dress, and then dressing the
wedding-dinner; and when I went to bed on Saturday night, I thought I
never wanted to see another.  Another wedding, of course, I mean.
However, everything went off very well; and Fanny looked charming in her
pink silk brocaded with flowers, with white stripes down it here and
there, and a pink quilted slip beneath.  She had pink rosettes, too, in
her shoes, and a white hood lined with pink and trimmed with pink bows.
Her hoop came from Carlisle, and was the biggest I have seen yet.  The
mantua-maker from Carlisle, who was five days in the house, said that
hoops were getting very much larger this year, and she thought they
would soon be as big as they were in Queen Anne's time.  We had much
smaller hoops--of course it would not have been seemly to have the
bridesmaids as smart as the bride--and we were dressed alike, in white
French cambric, with light green trimmings.  Of course we all wore white
ribbons.  I think Father would have stormed at us if we had put on any
other colour.  I should not like to be the one to wear a red ribbon when
he was by!  [Note 1.]  We wore straw milk-maid hats, with green ribbon
mixed with the white; and just a sprinkle of grey powder in our hair.
Cecilia would not be a bridesmaid, though she was asked.  I don't think
she liked the dress chosen; and indeed it would not have suited her.
But wasn't she dressed up!  She wore--I really must set it down--a
purple lutestring, [Note 2.] over such a hoop that she had to lift it on
one side when she went in at the church door; this was guarded with gold
lace and yellow feathers.  She had a white laced apron, purple velvet
slippers with red heels, and her lace ruffles were something to look at!
And wasn't she patched! and hadn't she powdered her hair, and made it
as stiff with pomatum as if it had been starched!  Then on the top of
this head went a lace cap--it was not a hood--just a little, light,
fly-away cap, with purple ribbons and gold embroidery, and in the middle
of the front a big gold pompoon.

What a contrast there was between her and my Aunt Kezia!  She wore a
silk dress too, only it was a dark stone-colour, as quiet as a
Quakeress, just trimmed with two rows of braid, the same colour, round
the bottom, and a white silk scarf, with a dark blue hood, and just a
little rosette of white lace at the top of it.  Aunt Kezia's hood was a
hood, too, and was tied under her chin as if she meant it to be some
good.  And her elbow-ruffles were plain nett, with long dark doe-skin
gloves drawn up to meet them.  Cecilia wore white silk mittens.  I hate
mittens; they are horrid things.  If you want to make your hands look as
ugly as you can, you have only to put on a pair of mittens.

The wedding-dinner, which was at noon, was a very grand one.  It should
have been, for didn't my arms ache with beating eggs and keeping pans
stirred!  Hatty said we were martyrs in a good cause.  But I do think
Fanny might have taken a little more trouble herself, seeing it was her
wedding.  Now, let us see, what had we?  There was a turkey pie, and a
boar's head, chickens in different ways, and a great baron of roast
beef; cream beaten to snow (Sophy did that, I am glad to say), candied
fruits, and ices, and several sorts of pudding, for dessert.  Then for
drink, there were wine, and mead, purl, and Burton ale.

Well! it is all over now, and Fanny is gone.  There will never be four
of us any more.  There seems to me something very sad about it.  Poor
dear Fanny, I hope she will be happy!

"I dare guess she will, in her way," says my Aunt Kezia.  "She does not
keep a large cup for her happiness.  'Tis all the easier to fill when
you don't; but a deal more will go in when you do.  There are advantages
and disadvantages on each side of most things in this world."

"Is there any advantage, Aunt Kezia, in my having just pricked my finger
shockingly?"

"Yes, Cary.  Learn to be more careful in future."

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Note 1.  The white ribbon, like the white cockade, distinguished a
Jacobite; the red ribbon and the black cockade were Hanoverian.

Note 2.  A variety of silk then fashionable.



CHAPTER FIVE.

LEAVING THE NEST.

  "I've kept old ways, and loved old friends,
  Till, one by one, they've slipped away;
  Stand where we will, cling as we like,
  There's none but God can be our stay.
  'Tis only by our hold on Him
  We keep a hold on those who pass
  Out of our sight across the seas,
  Or underneath the churchyard grass."

  ISABELLA FYVIE MAYO.

                                     Carlisle, April the 5th, 1744 or 5.
I really feel that I must put a date to my writing now, when this is the
first time of my going out into the great world.  I have never been
beyond Carlisle before, and now I am going, first into a new country,
and then to London itself, if all go well.

News came last night, just before we started, that my Lord Orford is
dead--he that was Sir Robert Walpole, and the Elector's Prime Minister.
Father says his death is a good thing for the country, for it gives more
hope that the King may come by his own.  I don't know what would happen
if he did.  I suppose it would not make much difference to us.  Indeed,
I rather wish things would not happen, for the things that happen are so
often disagreeable ones.  I said so this evening, and Mr Keith smiled,
and answered, "You are young to have reached that conviction, Miss
Caroline."

"Oh, rubbish!" said Angus.  "Only old women talk so!"

"Angus, will you please tell me," said I, "whether young men have
generally more sense than old women?"

"Of course they have!" replied he.

"The young men are apt to think so," added Flora.

"But have young women more sense than old ones?" said I.  "Because I
see, whenever people mean to speak of anything as particularly silly,
they always say it is worthy of an old woman.  Now why an old woman?
Have I more commonsense now than I shall have fifty years hence?  And if
so, at what age may I expect it to take leave of me?"

"You are not talking sense now, at any rate," replied Angus--who might
be my brother, instead of my cousin, for the way in which he takes me
up, whatever I say.

"Pardon me," said Mr Keith.  "I think Miss Caroline is talking very
good sense."

"Then you may answer her," said Angus.

"Nay," returned Mr Keith.  "The question was addressed to you."

"Oh, all women are sillies!" was Angus's flattering answer.  "They're
just a pack of ninnies, the whole lot of them."

"It seems to me, Angus," observed Mr Keith, quite gravely, "that you
must have paid twopence extra for manners."

Flora and I laughed.

"I was not rich enough to go in for any," growled Angus.  "I'm not a
laird's son, Mr Duncan Keith, so you don't need to throw stones at me."

"Did I, Angus?  I beg your pardon."

Angus muttered something which I did not hear, and was silent.  I
thought I had better let the subject drop.

But before we went to bed, something happened which I never saw before.
Mr Keith took a book from his pocket, and sat down at the table.  Flora
rose and went to the sofa, motioning to me to come beside her.  Even
Angus twisted himself round, and sat in a more decorous way.

"What are we going to do?"  I asked of Flora.

"The exercise, dear," said she.

"Exercise!" cried I.  "What are we to exercise?"

A curious sort of gurgle came from Angus's part of the room, as if a
laugh had made its way into his throat, and he had smothered it in its
cradle.

"The word is strange to Miss Caroline," said Mr Keith, looking round
with a smile.  "We Scots people, Madam, speak of exercising our souls in
prayer.  We are about to read in God's Word, and pray, if you please.
It is our custom, morning and evening."

"But how can we pray?" said I.  "There is no clergyman."

"Though I am not a minister," replied Mr Keith, "yet I trust I have
learned to pray."

It seemed to me so strange that anybody not a clergyman should think of
praying before other people!  However, I sat down, of course, on the
sofa by Flora, and listened while Mr Keith read something out of the
Gospel of Saint John, about the woman of Samaria, and what our Lord said
to her.  But I never heard such reading in my life!  I thought I could
have gone on listening to him all night.  The only clergymen that I ever
heard read were Mr Bagnall and poor old Mr Digby, and the one always
read in a high singsong tone, which gave me the idea that it was nothing
I need listen to; and the other mumbled indistinctly, so that I never
heard what he said.  But Mr Keith read as if the converse were really
going on, and you actually heard our Lord and the woman talking to one
another at the well.  He made it seem so real that I almost fancied I
could hear the water trickling, and see the cool wet green mosses round
the old well.  Oh, if clergymen would always read and preach as if the
things were real, how different going to church would be!

Then we knelt down, and Mr Keith prayed.  It was not out of the
Prayer-Book.  And I dare say, if I were to hear nothing but such
prayers, I might miss the dear old prayers that have been like sweet
sounds floating around me ever since I knew anything.  But this evening,
when it was all new, it came to me as so solemn and so real!  This was
not saying one's prayers; it was talking to one's Friend.  And it seemed
as if God really were Mr Keith's Friend--as if they knew each other,
and were not strangers at all, but each understood what the other would
like or dislike, and they wanted to please one another.  I hope I am not
irreverent in writing so, but really it did seem like that.  And I never
saw anything like it before.

I suppose, to the others, it was an old worn-out story--all this which
came so new and fresh to me.  When we rose up, Angus said, without any
pause,--

"Well!  I am off to bed.  Good-night, all of you."

Flora went up to him and offered him a kiss, which he took as if it were
a condescension to an inferior creature; and then, without saying
anything more to Mr Keith or me, lighted his candle and went away.
Flora sighed as she looked after him, and Mr Keith looked at her as if
he felt for her.

"I shall be glad to get him home," said Flora, answering Mr Keith's
look, I think.  "If he can only get back to Father, then, perhaps--"

"Aye," said Mr Keith, meaningly, "it is all well, when we do get back
to the Father."

Flora shook her head sorrowfully.  "Not that!" she answered.  "O Duncan,
I am afraid, not that, yet!  I feel such terrible fear sometimes lest he
should never come back at all, or if he do, should have to come over
sharp stones and through thorny paths."

"`So He bringeth them unto their desired haven,'" was Mr Keith's gentle
answer.

"I know!" she said, with a sigh.  "I suppose I ought to pray and wait.
Father does, I am sure.  But it is hard work!"

Mr Keith did not answer for a moment; and when he did, it was by
another bit of the Bible.  At least I think it was the Bible, for it
sounded like it, but I should not know where to find it.

"`Wait on the Lord; be of good courage, and He shall strengthen thine
heart; wait, I say, on the Lord.'"

------------------------------------------------------------------------

                                             Castleton, April the sixth.
Mr Keith left us so early this morning that there was not time for
anything except breakfast and good-bye.  I feel quite sorry to lose him,
and wish I had a brother like him.  (Not like Angus--dear me, no!)  Why
could we four girls not have had one brother?

About half an hour after Mr Keith was gone, the Scots gentleman with
whom we were to travel--Mr Cameron--came in.  He is a man of about
fifty, bald-headed and rosy-faced, pleasant and chatty enough, only I do
not quite always understand him.  By six o'clock we were all packed into
his chaise, and a few minutes later we set forth from the inn door.  The
streets of Carlisle felt like home; but as we left them behind, and came
gradually out into the open country, it dawned upon me that now, indeed,
I was going out into the great world.

We sleep here to-night, where Flora and I have a little bit of a
bed-chamber next door to a larger one where Mr Cameron and Angus are.
On Monday we expect to reach Abbotscliff.  I am too tired to write more.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

                                     Abbotscliff Manse, April the ninth.
I really could not go on any sooner.  We reached the manse--what an odd
name for a vicarage!--about four o'clock yesterday afternoon.  The
church (which Flora calls the kirk) and the manse, with a few other
houses, stand on a little rising ground, and the rest of the village
lies below.

But before I begin to talk about the manse, I want to write down a
conversation which took place on Monday morning as we journeyed, in
which Mr Cameron told us some curious things that I do not wish to
forget.  We were driving through such a pretty little village, and in
one of the doorways an old woman sat with her knitting.

"Oh, look at that dear old woman!" cries Flora.  "How pleasant she
looks, with her clean white apron and mutch!"

"Much, Flora?" said I.  "What do you mean?"  I thought it such an odd
word to use.  What was she much?

Flora looked puzzled, and Mr Cameron answered for her, with amusement
in his eyes.

"A mutch, young lady," said he, "is what you in the South call a cap."

"The South!" cried I.  "Why, Mr Cameron, you do not think we live in
the South?"

I felt almost vexed that he should fancy such a thing.  For all that
Grandmamma and my Aunt Dorothea used to say, I always look down upon the
South.  All the people I have seen who came from the South seemed to me
to have a great deal of wiliness and foolishness, and no commonsense.  I
suppose the truth is that there are agreeable people, and good people,
in the South, only they have not come my way.

When I cried out like that, Mr Cameron laughed.

"Well," said he, "north and south are comparative terms.  We in Scotland
think all England `the South,'--and so it is, if you will think a
moment.  You in Cumberland, I suppose, draw the line at the Trent or the
Humber; lower down, they employ the Thames; and a Surrey man thinks
Sussex is the South.  'Tis all a matter of comparison."

"What does a Sussex man call the South?" said Angus.

"Spain and Portugal, I should think," said Mr Cameron.

"But, Mr Cameron," said I, "asking your pardon, is there not some
difference of character or disposition between those in the North and in
the South--I mean, of England?"

"Quite right, young lady," said he.  "They are different tribes; and the
Lowland Scots, among whom you are now coming, have the same original as
yourself.  There were two tribes amongst those whom we call
Anglo-Saxons, that peopled England after the Britons were driven into
Wales--namely, as you might guess, the Angles and the Saxons.  The
Angles ran from the Frith of Forth to the Trent; the Saxons from the
Thames southward.  The midland counties were in all likelihood a mixture
of the two.  There are, moreover, several foreign elements beyond this,
in various counties.  For instance, there is a large influx of Danish
blood on the eastern coast, in parts of Lancashire, in Yorkshire and
Lincolnshire, and in the Weald of Sussex; there was a Flemish settlement
in Lancashire and Norfolk, of considerable extent; the Britons were left
in great numbers in Cumberland and Cornwall; the Jutes--a variety of
Dane--peopled Kent entirely.  Nor must we forget the Romans, who left a
deep impress upon us, especially amongst Welsh families.  'Tis not easy
for any of our mixed race to say, I am this, or that.  Why, if most of
us spoke the truth (supposing we might know it), we should say, `I am
one-quarter Saxon, one-eighth British, one-sixteenth Iberian, one-eighth
Danish, one-sixteenth Flemish, one-thirty-secondth part Roman,'--and so
forth.  Now, Miss Caroline, how much of that can you remember?"

"All of it, I hope, Sir," said I; "I shall try to do so.  I like to hear
of those old times.  But would you please to tell me, what is an
Iberian?"

"My dear," said Mr Cameron, smiling, "I would gladly give you fifty
pounds in gold, if you could tell me."

"Sir!" cried I, in great surprise.

He went on, more as if he were talking to himself, or to some very
learned man, than to me.

"What is an Iberian?  Ah, for the man who could tell us!  What is a
Basque?--what is an Etruscan?--what is a Magyar?--above all, what is a
Cagot?  Miss Caroline, my dear, there are deep questions in all arts and
sciences; and, without knowing it, you have lighted on one of the
deepest and most interesting.  The most learned man that breathes can
only answer you, as I do now (though I am far from being a learned
man)--I do not know.  I will, nevertheless, willingly tell you what
little I do know; and the rather if you take an interest in such
matters.  All that we really know of the Iberii is that they came from
Spain, and that they had reached that country from the East; that they
were a narrow-headed people (the Celts or later Britons were
round-headed); that they dwelt in rude houses in the interior of the
country, first digging a pit in the ground, and building over it a kind
of hut, sometimes of turf and sometimes of stone; that they wore very
rude clothing, and were generally much less civilised than the Celts,
who lived mainly on the coast; that they loved to dwell, and especially
to worship, on a mountain top; that they followed certain Eastern
observances, such as running or leaping through the fire to Bel,--which
savours of a Phoenician or Assyrian origin; and that it is more than
likely that we owe to them those stupendous monuments yet standing--
Stonehenge, Avebury, the White Horse of Berkshire, and the White Man of
Wilmington."

"But what sort of a religion had they, if you please, Sir?" said I; for
I wanted to get to know all I could about these strange fathers of ours.

"Idolatry, my dear, as you might suppose," answered Mr Cameron.  "They
worshipped the sun, which they identified with the serpent; and they
had, moreover, a sacred tree--all, doubtless, relics of Eden.  They
would appear also to have had some sort of woman-worship, for they held
women in high honour, loved female sovereignty, and practised
polyandry--that is, each woman had several husbands."

"I never heard of such queer folks!" said I.  "And what became of them,
Sir?"

"The Iberians and Celts together," he answered, "made up the people we
call Britons.  When the Saxons invaded the country, they were driven
into the remote fastnesses of Wales, Cumberland, and Cornwall.  Some
antiquaries think the Picts had the same original, but this is one of
the unsettled points of history."

"I wish it were possible to settle all such questions!" said Flora.

"So do the antiquaries, I can assure you," returned Mr Cameron, with a
smile.  "But it is scarce possible to come to a conclusion with any
certainty as to the origin of a people of whom we cannot recover the
language."

"If you please, Sir," said I, "what has the language to do with it?"

"It has everything to do with it, Miss Caroline.  You did not know that
languages grew, like plants, and could be classified in groups after the
same manner?"

"Please explain to us, Mr Cameron," said Flora.  "It all sounds so
strange."

"But it is very interesting," I said.  "I want to know all about it."

"If you want to know _all_ about it," answered our friend, "you must
consult some one else than me, for I do not know nearly all about it.
In truth, no one does.  For myself, I have only arrived at the stage of
knowing that I know next to nothing."

"That's easy enough to know, surely," said Angus.

"Not at all, Angus.  It is one of the most difficult things to ascertain
in this world.  No man is so ready to give an off-hand opinion on any
and every subject, as the man who knows absolutely nothing.  But we must
not start another hare while the young ladies' question remains
unanswered.  Languages, my dears, are not made; they grow.  The first
language--that spoken in Eden--may have been given to man ready-made, by
God; but I rather imagine, from the expressions of Holy Writ, that what
was granted to Adam was the inward power of forming a tongue which
should be rational and consistent with itself; and, if so, no doubt it
was granted to Eve that she should understand him--perhaps that she
should possess a similar power."

"The woman made the language, Sir, you may be sure," said Angus.  "They
are shocking chatterers."

"Unfortunately, my boy, Scripture is against you.  `Whatsoever Adam'--
not Eve--`called the name of every living creature, that was the name
thereof.'  To proceed:--The confusion of tongues at Babel seems, from
what we can gather, to have called into being a number of languages
quite separate from each other, yet all having a certain affinity.  The
structure differs; but some of the words are alike, or at least so
nearly alike that the resemblance can be traced.  Take the word for
`father' in all languages: cut down to its root, there is the same root
found in all.  Ab in Hebrew, abba in Syriac, pater in Greek and Latin,
vater in Low Dutch, pere in French, padre in Spanish and Italian, father
in English--ay, even the child's papa and the infant's daddy--all come
from one root.  But this cutting away of superfluities to get at the
root, is precisely what a 'prentice hand should not attempt; like an
unskilled gardener, he will prune away the wrong branches."

"Then, Sir," I asked, "what are the languages which belong to the same
class as ours?"

"Ours, young lady, is a composite language.  It may almost be said to be
made up of bits of other languages.  German or Low Dutch is its mother,
and the Scandinavian group--Swedish, Danish, and so forth--may be termed
its aunts.  It belongs mostly to what is called the Teutonic group; but
there are in it traces of Celtic, and though more dimly perceptible,
even of Latin and Oriental tongues.  We are altogether a made-up
nation--to which fact some say that we owe those excellences on which we
are so fond of priding ourselves."

"Please, Sir, what are they?"  I asked.

Mr Cameron seemed much amused at the question.

"What are the excellences we have?" said he; "or, what are those on
which we pride ourselves?  They are often not the same.  And--notice it,
young ladies, as you go through life--the virtue on which a man plumes
himself the most highly is very frequently one which he possesses in
small measure.  (I do not say, in no measure.)  Well, I suppose the
qualities on which we English--"

"We are not English!" cried Angus, hotly.

"For this purpose we are," was Mr Cameron's answer.  "As I observed
before, the Lowland Scots and the northern English are one tribe.  But I
was going to say, when you were so rude as to interrupt me, English and
Scots, young gentleman."

Angus growled out, "Beg your pardon."

"Take it," said Mr Cameron, pleasantly.  "Now for the question.  On
what good qualities do we plume ourselves?  Well, I think, on
steadiness, independence, loyalty, truthfulness, firmness, honesty, and
love of fair play.  How far we are justified in doing so, perhaps other
nations are the better judges.  They, I believe, generally regard us as
a proud and surly race--qualities on which there is no occasion to plume
ourselves."

"Much loyalty we have got to glory in!" said Angus.

"We have always tried," replied Mr Cameron, "to run loyalty and liberty
together; and when the two pull smoothly, undoubtedly the national
chaise gets along the best.  Unhappily, when harnessed to the same
chariot, one of those steeds is very apt to kick over the traces.  But
we will not venture on such delicate ground, seeing that our political
colours differ; nor is this the time to do it, for here is the inn where
we are to dine."

When we drove up to the manse on Wednesday, the floor stood open, and in
the doorway was Helen Raeburn, who had evidently seen our chaise, and
was waiting for us.  Flora was out the first, and she and Helen flew
into one another's arms, and hugged and kissed each other as if they
could never leave off.  I was surprised to find Helen so old.  I thought
Elspie's niece would have been between thirty and forty; and she looks
more like sixty.  Then Flora flew into the house to find her father, and
Helen turned to me.

"You're vara welcome, young leddy," said she, "and the Lord make ye a
blessin' amang us.  Will ye come ben the now?  Miss Flora, she's aff to
find the minister, bless her bonnie face!--but if ye'll please to come
awa' wi' me, I'll show ye the way.--Maister Angus, my laddie, welcome
hame!--are ye grown too grand to kiss your auld nursie, my callant?"

Angus gave her a kiss, but not at all like Flora; rather as if he had it
to do, and wanted to get it over.

"Well, Helen!" said Mr Cameron, as he came down from the chaise, "and
how goes the world with you, my woman?"

"I wish ye a gude evening, Mr Alexander," said she.  "The warld gaes
vara weel wi' me, thanks to ye for speirin'.  No that the warld's onie
better, but the Lord turns all to gude for His ain.  The minister's in
his study, and he'll be blithe to see ye.  Now, my lassie--I ask your
pardon, but ye see I'm used to Miss Flora."

"Please call me just what you like," I said, and I followed Helen up a
little passage paved with stone, and into a room on the right hand,
where I found Flora standing by a tall fine-looking man, who had his arm
round her shoulders, and who was so like her that he could only be her
father.  Flora's face was lighted up as I had seen it but once before--
so bright and happy she looked!

"And here is our young guest, your cousin," said my Uncle Drummond,
turning to me with a very kind smile.  "My dear, may your stay be
profitable and pleasant among us,--ay, and mayest thou find favour in
the eyes of the God of Israel, under whose wings thou art come to
trust!"

It sounded very strange to me.  Did these people pray about everything?
I had heard Father speak contemptuously of "praying Presbyters," and I
thought Uncle Drummond must be one of that sort.  But I could not see
that a minister looked at all different from a clergyman.  They seemed
to me very much the same sort of creature.

Mr Cameron was to stay the night at the manse, and to go on in the
morning to his own home, which is about fourteen miles further.  Flora
carried me off to her chamber, where she and I were to sleep, and we
changed our travelling dresses, and had a good wash, and then came down
to supper.  During the evening Mr Cameron said, laughingly,--

"Well, my fair maid who objects to the South, have you digested the
Iberii?"

"I think I have remembered all you told us, Sir," said I; "but if you
please, I am very sorry, but I am afraid we do come from the South.  Our
family, I mean.  My father's father, I believe, belonged Wiltshire; and
his father, who was a captain in the navy, was a Courtenay of Powderham,
whatever that means.  My sister Fanny knows all about it, but I don't
understand it--only I am afraid we must have come from the South."

Mr Cameron laughed, and so did my Uncle Drummond and Flora.

"Don't you, indeed, young lady?" said the first.  "Well, it only means
that you have half the kings of England and France, and a number of
emperors of the East, among your forefathers.  Very blue blood indeed,
Miss Caroline.  I do not see how, with that pedigree, you could be
anything but a Tory.  Mr Courtenay is rather warm that way, I
understand."

"Oh, Father is as strong as he can be," said I.  "I should not dare to
talk of the Elector of Hanover by any other name if he heard me."

"Well, you may call that gentleman what you please here," said Mr
Cameron; "but I usually style him King George."

"Nay, Sandy, do not teach the child to disobey her father," said my
Uncle Drummond.  "The Fifth Command is somewhat older than the Brunswick
succession and the Act of Settlement."

"A little," said Mr Cameron, drily.

"Little Cary," said my uncle, softly, turning to me, "do you know that
you are very like somebody?"

"Like whom, Uncle?" said I.

"Somebody I loved very much, my child," he answered, rather sadly; "from
whom Angus has his blue eyes, and Flora her smile."

"You mean Aunt Jane," said I, speaking as softly as he had done, for I
felt that she had been very dear to him.

"Yes, my dear," he replied; "I mean my Jeannie.  You are very like her.
I think we shall love each other, Cary."

I thought so too.

Mr Cameron left us this morning.  To-day I have been exploring with
Flora, who wants to go all over the house and garden and village--speaks
of her pet plants as if they were old friends, and shakes hands with
everyone she meets, and pats every dog and cat in the place.  And they
all seem so glad to see her--the dogs included; I do not know about the
cats.  As we went down the village street, it was quite amusing to hear
the greetings from every doorway.

"Atweel, Miss Flora, ye've won hame!" said one.

"How's a' wi' ye, my bairn?" said another.

"A blessing on your bonnie e'en, my lassie!" said a third.

And Flora had the same sort of thing for all of them.  It was, "Well,
Jeannie, is your Maggie still in her place?" or, "I hope Sandy's better
now?" or, "Have you lost your pains, Isabel?"  She seemed to know all
about each one.  I was quite diverted to hear it all.  They all appeared
rather shy with me, only very kindly; and when Flora introduced me as
"her cousin from England," which she did in every cottage, they had all
something kind to say: that they hoped I was well after my journey, or
they trusted I should like Scotland, or something of that sort.  Two
told me I was a bonnie lassie.  But at last we came to a shut door--most
were open--and Flora knocked and waited for an answer.  She said gravely
to me,--

"A King's daughter lies here, Cary, waiting for her Father's chariot to
take her home."

A fresh-coloured, middle-aged woman came to the door, and I was
surprised to hear Flora say, "How is your grandmother, Elsie?"

"She's mickle as ye laft her, Miss Flora, only weaker; I'm thinkin'
she'll no be lang the now.  But come ben, my bonnie lassie; you're as
welcome as flowers in May.  And how's a' wi' ye?"

Flora answered as we were following Elsie down the chamber and round a
screen which boxed off the end of it.  Behind the screen was a bed, and
on it lay, as I thought, the oldest woman on whom I ever set my eyes.
Her face was all wrinkled up, yet there was a fresh colour in her
cheeks, and her eyes, though much sunk, seemed piercingly bright.

"Ye're come at last," she said, in a low clear voice, as Flora sat down
on the bed, and took the wrinkled brown hand in hers.

"Yes, dear Mirren, come at last," said she.  "I'm very glad to get
home."

"Ay, and that's what I'll be the morn."

"So soon, Mirren?"

"Ay, just sae soon.  I askit Him to let me bide while ye came hame.  I
ay thocht I wad fain see ye ance mair--my Miss Flora's lad's lassie.
He's gi'en me a' that ever I askit Him--but ane thing, an' that was the
vara desire o' my heart."

"You mean," said Flora, gently, "you wanted Ronald to come home?"

"Ay, I wanted him to come hame frae the far country!" said old Mirren
with a sigh.  "I'd ha'e likit weel to see him come hame to Abbotscliff--
vara weel.  But I longed mickle mair to see him come hame to the
Father's house.  It's no for his auld minnie to see that.  But if it's
for the Lord to see some ither day, I'm content.  And He has gi'en me
sae monie things that I ne'er askit Him wi' ane half the longing that I
did for that, I dinna think He'll say me nay the now."

"Is He with you, Mirren dear?"

I could not imagine how Flora thought Mirren was to know that.  But she
answered, with a light in those bright eyes,--

"Ay, my doo.  `His left haun is under my heid, and His richt haun doth
embrace me.'"

I sat and listened in wonder.  It all sounded so strange.  Yet Flora
seemed to understand.  And I had such an unpleasant sense of being
outside, and not understanding, as I never felt before, and I did not
like it a bit.  I knew quite well that if Father had been there, he
would have said it was all stuff and cant.  But I did not feel so sure
of my Aunt Kezia.  And suppose it were not cant, but was something
unutterably real,--something that I ought to know, and must know some
day, if I were ever to get to Heaven!  I did not like it.  I felt that I
was among a new sort of people--people who lived, as it were, in a
different place from me--a sort of whom I had never seen one before
(that did not come from Abbotscliff) except my Aunt Kezia, and there
were differences between her and them.  My Uncle Drummond and Flora, and
Mr Keith, and this old Mirren, and I thought Helen Raeburn and Mr
Cameron, all belonged this new sort of people.  The one who did not seem
to belong them was Angus.  Yet I did not like Angus nearly so well as
the rest.  And yet he belonged my sort of people.  It was a puzzle
altogether, and not a pleasant puzzle.  And how anybody was to get out
of the one set into the other set, I could not tell at all.

Stop!  I did know one other person at Brocklebank who belonged this new
sort of people.  It was Ephraim Hebblethwaite.  He was not, I thought--
well, I don't know how to put it--he did not seem so far on the road as
the others; only he was on that road, and not on this road.  And then it
struck me, too, whether old Elspie, and perhaps Sam, were not on the
road as well.  I ran over in my mind, as I was walking back to the manse
with Flora, who was very silent, all the people I knew; and I could not
think of one other who might be on Flora's road.  Father and my sisters,
Esther Langridge, the Catteralls, the Bracewells, Cecilia--oh dear,
no!--Mr Digby, Mr Bagnall (yet they were parsons), Mr Parmenter--no,
not one.  At all the four I named last, my mind gave a sort of jump as
if it were quite astonished to be asked the question.  But where did the
roads lead?  Flora and her sort, I felt quite sure, were going to
Heaven.  Then where were Angus and I and all the rest going?

And I did not like the answer at all.

But I felt that the two roads led in opposite ways, and they could not
both go to one place.

As we walked up the path to the manse, Helen came out to meet us.

"My lassie," she said to Flora, "there's Miss Annas i' the garden, and
Leddy Monksburn wad ha'e ye gang till Monksburn for a dish o' tea, and
Miss Cary wi' ye."

Flora's face lighted up.

"Oh, how delightful!" she said.  "Come, Cary--come and see Annas Keith."

I was very curious to see Annas, and I followed willingly.  Under the
old beech at the bottom of the garden sat a girl-woman--she was not
either, but both--in a gown of soft camlet, which seemed as if it were
part of her; I do not mean so much in the fit of it, as in the complete
suitableness of it and her.  Her head was bent down over a book, and I
could not see her face at first--only her hair, which was neither light
nor dark, but had a kind of golden shimmer.  Her hat lay beside her on
the seat.  Flora ran down the walk with a glad cry of "Annas!" and then
she stood up, and I saw Annas Keith.

A princess! was my first thought.  I saw a tall, slight figure, a
slender white throat, a pure pale face, dark grey eyes with black
lashes, and a soul in them.  Some people have no souls in their eyes,
Annas Keith has.

Yet I could not have said then, and I cannot say now, when I try to
recall her picture in my mind's eye, whether Annas Keith is beautiful.
It does not seem the right word to describe her: and yet "ugly" would be
much further off.  She is one of those women about whose beauty or want
of beauty you never think unless you are trying to describe them, and
then you cannot tell what to say about it.  She takes you captive.
There is a charm about her that I cannot put into words.  Only it is as
different from the spell that Cecilia Osborne threw over me (at first)
as light differs from darkness.  The charm about Annas feels as if it
lifted me higher, into a purer air.  Whenever I had been long with
Cecilia, my mind felt soiled, as if I had been breathing bad air.

When Flora introduced me, Miss Keith turned and kissed me, and I felt as
if I had been presented to a queen.

"We want to know you," she said.  "All Flora's friends are our friends.
You will come, both of you?"

"I thank you, Miss Keith," said I.  "I should like to come very much."

"Annas, please," she said quietly, with that sweet smile of hers.  It is
only when she smiles that she reminds me of her brother.

"And how are the Laird and Lady Monksburn?" said Flora.

I did not know that the Laird (as they always seem to call the squires
here) had been a titled gentleman: and I said so.  Annas smiled.

"Our titles will seem odd to you," said she.  "We call a Scots gentleman
by the name of his estate, and every laird's wife is `Lady'--only by
custom and courtesy, you understand.  My mother really is only Mrs
Keith, but you will hear everybody call her Lady Monksburn."

"Then if my father were here, they would call him--" I hesitated, and
Flora ended the sentence for me.

"The Laird of Brocklebank; and if you had a mother she would be Lady
Brocklebank."

I thought it sounded rather pleasant.

"And when is Duncan coming home?" asked Flora.

"To-morrow, or the day after, we hope," said Annas.

I noticed that she had less of the Scots accent than Flora; and Mr
Keith has it scarcely at all.  I found after a while that Lady Monksburn
is English, and that Annas has spent much of her life in England.  I
wanted to know what part of England it was, and she said, "The Isle of
Wight."

"Why, then you do really come from the South!" cried I.  "Do tell me
something about it.  Are there any agreeable people there?--I mean,
except you."

Annas laughed.  "I hope you have seen few people from the South," said
she, "if that be your impression of them."

"Only two," said I; "and I did not like either of them one bit."

"Well, two is no large acquaintance," said Annas.  "Let me assure you
that there are plenty of agreeable people in the South, and good people
also; though I will not say that they are not different from us in the
North.  They speak differently, and their manners are more polished."

"But it is just that polish I feel afraid of," I replied.  "It looks to
me so like a mask.  If we are bears in the North, at least we mean what
we say."

"I do not think you need fear a polished Christian," said Annas.  "A
worldly man, polished or unpolished, may do you hurt."

"But are we not all Christians?" said I.  And the words were scarcely
out of my lips when the thoughts came back to me which had been
tormenting me as we walked up from old Mirren's cottage.  Those two
roads!  Did Annas mean that only those were Christians who took the
higher one?  Only, what was there in the air of Abbotscliff which seemed
to make people Christians? or in that of Brocklebank, which seemed
unfavourable to it?

"Those are Christians who follow Christ," said Annas.  "Do you think
they who do not, have a right to the name?"

"I should like to think more about it," I answered.  "It all looks
strange to me."

"Do think about it," replied Annas.

When we came to Monksburn, which is about a mile from the manse, I found
it was a most charming place on the banks of the Tweed.  The lawn ran
sloping down to the river; and the house was a lovely old building of
grey stone, in some places almost lost in ivy.  Annas said it had been
the Abbots grange belonging to the old Abbey which gives its name to
Abbotscliff and Monksburn, and several other estates and villages in the
neighbourhood.  Here we found Lady Monksburn in the drawing-room, busied
with some soft kind of embroidered work; and I thought I could have
guessed her to be the mother of Mr Keith.  Then when the Laird came in,
I saw that his grey eyes were Annas's, though I should not call them
alike in other respects.

Lady Monksburn is a dear old lady; and as she comes from the South, I
must never say a word against Southerners again.  She took both my hands
in her soft white ones, and spoke to me so kindly that before I had
known her ten minutes I was almost surprised to find myself chattering
away to her as if she were quite an old friend--telling her all about
Brocklebank, and my sisters, and Father, and my Aunt Kezia.  I could not
tell how it was,--I felt so completely at home in that Monksburn
drawing-room.  Everybody was so kind, and seemed to want me to enjoy
myself, and yet there was no fuss about it.  If those be southern
manners, I wish I could catch them, like small-pox.  But perhaps they
are Christian manners.  That may be it.  And I don't suppose you can
catch that like the small-pox.  However, I certainly did enjoy myself
this afternoon.  Mr Keith, I find, can draw beautifully, and they let
me look through some of his portfolios, which was delightful.  And when
Annas, at her mother's desire, at down to the harpsichord, and sang us
some old Scots songs, I thought I never heard anything so charming--
until Flora joined in, and then it was more delicious still.

I think it would be easy to be good, if one lived at Monksburn!

Those grey eyes of Annas's seem to see everything.  I am sure she saw
that Flora would like a quiet talk with Lady Monksburn, and she carried
me to see her peacocks and silver pheasants, which are great pets, she
says; and they are so tame that they will come and eat out of her hand.
Of course they were shy with me.  Then we had a charming little walk on
the path which ran along by the side of the river, and Annas pointed out
some lovely peeps through the trees at the scenery beyond.  When we came
in, I saw that Flora had been crying; but she seemed so much calmer and
comforted, that I am sure her talk had done her good.  Then came supper,
and then Angus, who had cleared up wonderfully, and was more what he
used to be as a boy, instead of the cross, gloomy young man he has
seemed of late.  Lady Monksburn offered to send a servant with arms to
accompany us home, but Angus appeared to think it quite unnecessary.  He
had his dirk and a pistol, he said; and surely he could take care of two
girls!  I am not sure that Flora would not rather have had the servant,
and I know I would.  However, we came safe to the manse, meeting nothing
more terrific than a white cow, which wicked Angus tried to persuade us
was a lady without a head.



CHAPTER SIX.

NEW IDEAS FOR CARY.

  "O Jesu, Thou art pleading,
  In accents meek and low,
  I died for you, My children,
  And will ye treat Me so?
  O Lord, with shame and sorrow,
  We open now the door:
  Dear Saviour, enter, enter,
  And leave us never more!"

  BISHOP WALSHAM HOW.

As we drank our tea, this evening, I said,--

"Uncle, will you please tell me something?"

"Surely, my dear, if I can," answered my Uncle Drummond kindly, laying
down his book.

"Are all the people at Abbotscliff going to Heaven?"

I really meant it, but my Uncle Drummond put on such a droll expression,
and Angus laughed so much, that I woke up to see that they thought I had
said something very queer.  When my uncle spoke, it was not at first to
me.

"Flora," said he, "where have you taken your cousin?"

"Only into the cottages, Father, and to Monksburn," said Flora, in a
diverted tone, as if she were trying not to laugh.

"Either they must all have had their Sabbath manners on," said my Uncle
Drummond, "or else there are strange folks at Brocklebank.  No, my dear;
I fear not, by any means."

"I am afraid," said I, "we must be worse folks at Brocklebank than I
thought we were.  But these seem to me, Uncle, such a different kind of
people--as if they were travelling on another road, and had a different
end in view.  Nearly all the people I see here seem to think more of
what they ought to do, and at Brocklebank we think of what we like to
do."

I did not, somehow, like to say right out what I really meant--to the
one set God seemed a Friend, to the other He was a Stranger.

"Do you hear, Angus, what a good character we have?" said my Uncle
Drummond, smiling.  "We must try to keep it, my boy."

Of course I could not say that I did not think Angus was included in the
"we."  But the momentary trouble in Flora's eyes, as she glanced at him,
made me feel that she saw it, as indeed I could have guessed from what I
had heard her say to Mr Keith.

"Well, my lassie," my Uncle Drummond went on, "while I fear we do not
all deserve the compliment you pay us, yet have you ever thought what
those two roads are, and what end they have in view?"

"Yes, Uncle, I can see that," said I.  "Heaven is at the end of one, I
am sure."

"And of the other, Cary?"

I felt the tears come into my eyes.

"Uncle, I don't like to think about that.  But do tell me, for that is
what I want to know, what is the difference?  I do not see how people
get from the one road to the other."

I did not say--but I feel sure that my Uncle Drummond did not need it--
that I felt I was on the wrong one.

"Lassie, if you had fallen into a deep tank of water, where the walls
were so high that it was not possible you could climb out by yourself,
for what would you hope?"

"That somebody should come and help me, I suppose."

"True.  And who is the Somebody that can help you in this matter?"

I thought, and thought, and could not tell.  It seems strange that I did
not think what he meant.  But I had been so used to think of our Lord
Jesus Christ as a Person who had a great deal to do with going to church
and the Prayer-book, but nothing at all to do with me, that really I did
not think what my uncle meant me to say.

"There is but one Man, my child, who can give you any help.  And He
longed to help you so much, that He came down from Heaven to do it.  You
know who I mean now, Cary?"

"You mean our Lord Jesus Christ," I said.  "But, Uncle, you say He
longed to help?  I never knew that, I always thought--"

"You thought He did not wish to help you at all, and that you would have
very hard work to persuade Him?"

"Well--something like it," I said, hesitatingly Flora had left the room
a moment before, and now she put her head in at the door and called
Angus.  My Uncle Drummond and I were left alone.

"My dear lassie," said he, as tenderly as if I had been his own child,
"you would never have wished to be helped if He had not first wished to
help you.  But remember, Cary, help is not the right word.  The true
word is save.  You are not a few yards out of the path, and able to turn
back at any moment.  You are lost.  Dear Cary, will you let the Lord
find you?"

"Can I hinder Him?"  I said.

"Yes, my dear," was the solemn answer.  "He allows Himself to be
hindered, if you choose the way of death.  He will not save you against
your will.  He demands your joining in that work.  Take, again, the
emblem of the tank: the man holds out his hands to you; you cannot help
yourself out; but you can choose whether you will put your hands in his
or not.  It will not be his fault if you are drowned; it will be your
own."

"Uncle, how am I to put my hands in _His_?"

"Hold them out to Him, Cary.  Ask Him, with all your heart, to take you,
and make you His own.  And if He refuse, let me know."

"I will try, Uncle," I answered.  "But you said--does God _never_ save
anybody against his will?"

My Uncle Drummond was silent for a moment.

"Well, Cary, perhaps at times He does.  But it is not His usual way of
working.  And no man has any right to expect it in his own case, though
we may be allowed to hope for it in that of another."

I wonder very much now, as I write it all down, how I ever came to say
all this to my Uncle Drummond.  I never meant it at all when I began.  I
suppose I got led on from one thing to another.  When I came to think of
it, I was very grateful to Flora for going away and calling Angus after
her.

"But, Uncle," I said, recollecting myself suddenly, "how does anybody
know when the Lord has heard him?"

He smiled.  "If you were lifted out of the tank and set on dry ground,
Cary, do you think you would have much doubt about it?"

"But I could see that, Uncle."

"Take another emblem, then.  You love some people very dearly, and there
are others whom you do not like at all.  You cannot see love and hate.
But have you any doubt whom you love, or whom you dislike?"

"No," said I,--"at least, not when I really love or dislike them very
much.  But there are people whom I cannot make up my mind about; I
neither like nor dislike them exactly."

"Those are generally people of whom you have not seen much, I think,"
said my Uncle Drummond; "or else they are those colourless men and women
of whom you say that they have nothing in them.  You could not feel so
towards a person of decided character, and one

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